2025 MIT Europe Conference in Vienna

Ben Armstrong is the executive director of MIT’s Industrial Performance Center, where he co-leads the Work of the Future initiative. His research examines how workers, firms, and regions adapt to technological change. His current projects include a working group on generative AI, as well as a book on American manufacturing competitiveness. His work has been published or featured in academic and popular outlets including the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Sloan Management Review, Times Higher Education, the Boston Review, Daedalus, and Economic Development Quarterly. He received his PhD from MIT and formerly worked at Google Inc. 

Bruce Lawler is a technology entrepreneur and executive leader with consecutive public and private exits, and early stage investing success with leading venture firms including Accel, CRV, KPCB, Redpoint, Sequoia, and Softbank. He is an industry thought leader and public speaker with development expertise in mobile applications, SaaS, artificial intelligence systems and video distribution networks; and an operations executive with experience ranging from consumer and industrial hardware/electronics manufacturing to wireless and video network operations (DevOps).

In 1998 Bruce founded a company to deliver digital video over the internet and had a successful IPO 2 years later.  In 2001 he founded a venture capital firm focused on investing in mobile phone technology. He invested in other successful entrepreneurs like Andy Rubin, the creator of Android.  In 2003 he founded a company to write applications for mobile phones which he recently sold to Motorola. 

Bruce began his career in Artificial Intelligence as a COMMON LISP developer at ICAD where he helped to automate design and manufacturing for companies that included Boeing, Airbus, GM, GE, Northrop Grumman and Ford.  He also helped fast track the porting of ICADs core platform from LISP/Symbolics to C++/SUN.  At Kodiak, Bruce led the development of the Kodiak Business Intelligence, a data visualization and analytics platform now used by Motorola.

Bruce attended Purdue University where he received his Bachelor’s degree in Engineering specializing in electro-mechanical control systems and was a President’s Honor Award recipient. In 1990 he was awarded the LGO Fellowship to attend MIT, where he obtained both a Master of Science in Engineering and an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School. 

J. Christopher Love is the Raymond A. (1921) and Helen E. St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering and member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.  His research focuses on advancing next-generation approaches for accessible and affordable biomanufacturing and on single-cell analyses in chronic diseases like cancer and food allergy. He served as a Distinguished Engineer in Residence at Biogen in 2015 and is the founding director of the Alternative Host Research Consortium at MIT.  He has also co-founded four companies for biopharmaceutical services and technologies, including Honeycomb Bio, OneCyte Bio, and Sunflower Therapeutics.

Kaitlyn Becker is an assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at MIT, where she leads the Fabrication-Integrated Design Lab (FIDL). Her research focuses on the co-development of mechanism design and the methods by which we make them, taking inspiration from biology, and manufacturing methods ranging from traditional to cutting-edge. This is rooted in a deep interest in the intersection of design and manufacturing, which she discovered as a mechanical engineer and a glassblower at MIT. Motivating Becker's work is the creation of tools for working in challenging environments like the deep sea and working with specimens that are delicate, compliant, and complex.

Becker completed her PhD in the Microrobotics lab at Harvard University, where she designed and fabricated soft robots for gentle grasping and biological sampling in the deep sea. After her PhD, Becker was a postdoctoral researcher in the Soft Math lab at Harvard, where I worked on coordinated and transformable structures.

Prior to graduate school, Becker completed her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at MIT in 2009 and then worked on the electronic assembly of subcutaneous defibrillators as a manufacturing engineer for Cameron Health, now owned by Boston Scientific. Following that, she moved on to high-precision replica molding, high-flow UV water purification, and electro-spinning, as a research and development engineer for Nano Terra Inc., a nano-technology company. Becker is also a senior instructor in the MIT glass lab, where she teaches intermediate classes that combine fundamental glassblowing techniques with creative design and technical concepts from core mechanical engineering curricula.

Hiram Samel is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He teaches global strategy, scenario planning and GO Lab. Prior to returning to  MIT Sloan, he was at the University of Oxford where he was an Associate Professor of International Business at the Saïd Business School and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall.

His research draws on multiple disciplines including comparative political economy, technology strategy, the economics of innovation, and labor studies.

Hiram’s early work looked at how firms strategically manage demand uncertainty in emerging economies, and the impact these strategies have on social and economic development. He coauthored a book on ethical consumption with four colleagues entitled Looking behind the Label: Global Industries and the Conscientious Consumer (Indiana University Press, 2015), which examines whether social justice, as espoused by voluntary, private systems of regulation such as Fairtrade, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and others, can be achieved through market mechanisms.

His research, with colleagues from MIT and Brown, on labor standards in the global electronics industry, demonstrates how retail concentration, product proliferation, and demand volatility can help explain the persistent problem of long working hours seen in the production networks of leading consumer electronics and computer makers. This research was published in Regulation and Governance and more recently in Studies in Comparative International Development. It has also been featured in The Economist and The New Yorker.

Hiram’s work on the PIE (Production in the Innovation Economy) Commission, in conjunction with other colleagues at MIT, on the process and pathways American entrepreneurial firms take in scaling novel production-related technologies attracted the interest of U.S. policymakers and is highlighted in two books from the MIT Press as well as an article in Mechanical Engineering. While a $10 billion public-private matched fund for manufacturing scale-ups based on this research and introduced into the 2016 U.S. Budget was never enacted, the research helped foreshadow the rise of economic nationalism in the global technology sector. His current book project examines how societies and markets apportion risk in environments characterized by a high degree of uncertainty.

Hiram has given talks to policymakers on such varied subjects as the institutional challenges of building entrepreneurial ecosystems in Abu Dhabi and Korea, and to real estate professionals on populism and the growing politics of place in the United Kingdom. His areas of expertise include: global strategy and entrepreneurship; populism, economic nationalism and trade; innovation and organizational design in uncertain environments; technological upgrading in the developmental state; the global division of innovative labor; labor market institutions; voluntary, private regulation; ethical consumption; and family business (next generation entrepreneurship).

Prior to starting his PhD program, Hiram was an entrepreneur, building and managing medium-sized companies that operated in 20 countries. In particular, he has had extensive experience in helping companies build technological and organizational capabilities in a number of emerging economies. He is an investor in and director of a variety of early-stage companies. He is also a trustee of various nonprofit organizations.

He received his AB from Brown University in history, magna cum laude, in 1982, and SM (2006) and PhD (2013) in management from MIT Sloan, where he was a Beyster Fellow and a Ford-MIT Energy Fellow.

John Liu is the Principal Investigator of the MIT Learning Engineering and Practice (LEAP) Group, which applies design principles to solving challenges to better meet the increasing demand for STEM skills in tomorrow’s workforce. He is a Digital Learning Lab Scientist and a Lecturer in MIT's Mechanical Engineering department. He leads education and workforce development efforts for MIT's new initiative: Manufacturing@MIT. He was the Director of the Principles of Manufacturing MicroMasters program, an online certificate program that has now enrolled over 200,000 learners across the globe. Dr. Liu's work includes engineering education, mixed reality and haptic experiences, workforce solutions to address the nation-wide manufacturing skills need, open-ended assessments for scalable education settings, and instructional design theory for massively open online courses. He received Best Paper Awards at the American Society Engineering Education (ASEE) in 2020. Dr. Liu earned his B.S. in Applied Physics from Caltech and S.M. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, under an MIT-SUTD fellowship and NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Institute Professor Suzanne Berger's  research focuses on politics and globalization. She  co-directs the new Manufacturing@MIT initiative which brings engineers, social scientists, and economists together to work on how to transform manufacturing.  She led the MIT Production in the Innovation Economy project (Making in America: From Innovation to Market, 2013). She created the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative (MISTI) program which today sends hundreds of MIT students abroad for internships in labs and companies.  She participated in the 1989 Made in America project at MIT and wrote Made By Hong Kong and Global Taiwan (with Richard K. Lester). She is the author of Notre Première Mondialisation and How We Compete. Her earlier work focused on political development (Peasants Against Politics) and the organization of interests (Dualism and Discontinuity in Industrial Societies and Organizing Interests in Western Europe).   

Suzanne Berger served as Head of the MIT Department of Political Science, founding chair of the SSRC Committee on West Europe, and Vice President of the American Political Science Association. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The French government has awarded her the Palmes Academiques, Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Merite and the Légion d'Honneur.

Institute Professor Suzanne Berger's research focuses on politics and globalization. She co-directs the new Manufacturing@MIT initiative which brings engineers, social scientists, and economists together to work on how to transform manufacturing.  She led the MIT Production in the Innovation Economy project (Making in America: From Innovation to Market, 2013). She created the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative (MISTI) program which today sends hundreds of MIT students abroad for internships in labs and companies.  She participated in the 1989 Made in America project at MIT and wrote Made By Hong Kong and Global Taiwan (with Richard K. Lester). She is the author of Notre Première Mondialisation and How We Compete. Her earlier work focused on political development (Peasants Against Politics) and the organization of interests (Dualism and Discontinuity in Industrial Societies and Organizing Interests in Western Europe).   

Suzanne Berger served as Head of the MIT Department of Political Science, founding chair of the SSRC Committee on West Europe, and Vice President of the American Political Science Association. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The French government has awarded her the Palmes Academiques, Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Merite and the Légion d'Honneur.

J. Christopher Love is Professor of Chemical Engineering and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.  He is also an Associate Member of the Broad Institute, and an Associate Member at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. Love earned a BS in chemistry from the University of Virginia and a PhD in physical chemistry at Harvard University under the supervision of George Whitesides. Following completion of his doctoral studies, he extended his research into immunology at Harvard Medical School with Hidde Ploegh from 2004-2005, and at the Immune Disease Institute from 2005-2007. Dr. Love has been named a W.M. Keck Distinguished Young Scholar for Medical Research (2009), a Dana Scholar for Human Immunology (2009), and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar.  Prof. Love served as a Distinguished Engineer in Residence at Biogen from 2015-2016.  He has co-authored more than 100 manuscripts and is an inventor on multiple patents.

Professor Love is co-founder of OneCyte Biotechnologies, HoneyComb Biotechnologies, and Sunflower Therapeutics. He serves as an advisor to SQZ Biotechnologies, Repligen, QuantrumCyte, and other companies.

Kaitlyn Becker is an assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at MIT, where she leads the Fabrication-Integrated Design Lab (FIDL). Her research focuses on the co-development of mechanism design and the methods by which we make them, taking inspiration from biology, and manufacturing methods ranging from traditional to cutting-edge. This is rooted in a deep interest in the intersection of design and manufacturing, which she discovered as a mechanical engineer and a glassblower at MIT. Motivating Becker's work is the creation of tools for working in challenging environments like the deep sea and working with specimens that are delicate, compliant, and complex.

Becker completed her PhD in the Microrobotics lab at Harvard University, where she designed and fabricated soft robots for gentle grasping and biological sampling in the deep sea. After her PhD, Becker was a postdoctoral researcher in the Soft Math lab at Harvard, where I worked on coordinated and transformable structures.

Prior to graduate school, Becker completed her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at MIT in 2009 and then worked on the electronic assembly of subcutaneous defibrillators as a manufacturing engineer for Cameron Health, now owned by Boston Scientific. Following that, she moved on to high-precision replica molding, high-flow UV water purification, and electro-spinning, as a research and development engineer for Nano Terra Inc., a nano-technology company. Becker is also a senior instructor in the MIT glass lab, where she teaches intermediate classes that combine fundamental glassblowing techniques with creative design and technical concepts from core mechanical engineering curricula.

Bruce Lawler is a technology entrepreneur and executive leader with consecutive public and private exits, and early stage investing success with leading venture firms including Accel, CRV, KPCB, Redpoint, Sequoia, and Softbank. He is an industry thought leader and public speaker with development expertise in mobile applications, SaaS, artificial intelligence systems and video distribution networks; and an operations executive with experience ranging from consumer and industrial hardware/electronics manufacturing to wireless and video network operations (DevOps).

In 1998 Bruce founded a company to deliver digital video over the internet and had a successful IPO 2 years later.  In 2001 he founded a venture capital firm focused on investing in mobile phone technology. He invested in other successful entrepreneurs like Andy Rubin, the creator of Android.  In 2003 he founded a company to write applications for mobile phones which he recently sold to Motorola. 

Bruce began his career in Artificial Intelligence as a COMMON LISP developer at ICAD where he helped to automate design and manufacturing for companies that included Boeing, Airbus, GM, GE, Northrop Grumman and Ford.  He also helped fast track the porting of ICADs core platform from LISP/Symbolics to C++/SUN.  At Kodiak, Bruce led the development of the Kodiak Business Intelligence, a data visualization and analytics platform now used by Motorola.

Bruce attended Purdue University where he received his Bachelor’s degree in Engineering specializing in electro-mechanical control systems and was a President’s Honor Award recipient. In 1990 he was awarded the LGO Fellowship to attend MIT, where he obtained both a Master of Science in Engineering and an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School. 

Hiram Samel is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He teaches global strategy, scenario planning and GO Lab. Prior to returning to  MIT Sloan, he was at the University of Oxford where he was an Associate Professor of International Business at the Saïd Business School and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall.

His research draws on multiple disciplines including comparative political economy, technology strategy, the economics of innovation, and labor studies.

Hiram’s early work looked at how firms strategically manage demand uncertainty in emerging economies, and the impact these strategies have on social and economic development. He coauthored a book on ethical consumption with four colleagues entitled Looking behind the Label: Global Industries and the Conscientious Consumer (Indiana University Press, 2015), which examines whether social justice, as espoused by voluntary, private systems of regulation such as Fairtrade, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and others, can be achieved through market mechanisms.

His research, with colleagues from MIT and Brown, on labor standards in the global electronics industry, demonstrates how retail concentration, product proliferation, and demand volatility can help explain the persistent problem of long working hours seen in the production networks of leading consumer electronics and computer makers. This research was published in Regulation and Governance and more recently in Studies in Comparative International Development. It has also been featured in The Economist and The New Yorker.

Hiram’s work on the PIE (Production in the Innovation Economy) Commission, in conjunction with other colleagues at MIT, on the process and pathways American entrepreneurial firms take in scaling novel production-related technologies attracted the interest of U.S. policymakers and is highlighted in two books from the MIT Press as well as an article in Mechanical Engineering. While a $10 billion public-private matched fund for manufacturing scale-ups based on this research and introduced into the 2016 U.S. Budget was never enacted, the research helped foreshadow the rise of economic nationalism in the global technology sector. His current book project examines how societies and markets apportion risk in environments characterized by a high degree of uncertainty.

Hiram has given talks to policymakers on such varied subjects as the institutional challenges of building entrepreneurial ecosystems in Abu Dhabi and Korea, and to real estate professionals on populism and the growing politics of place in the United Kingdom. His areas of expertise include: global strategy and entrepreneurship; populism, economic nationalism and trade; innovation and organizational design in uncertain environments; technological upgrading in the developmental state; the global division of innovative labor; labor market institutions; voluntary, private regulation; ethical consumption; and family business (next generation entrepreneurship).

Prior to starting his PhD program, Hiram was an entrepreneur, building and managing medium-sized companies that operated in 20 countries. In particular, he has had extensive experience in helping companies build technological and organizational capabilities in a number of emerging economies. He is an investor in and director of a variety of early-stage companies. He is also a trustee of various nonprofit organizations.

He received his AB from Brown University in history, magna cum laude, in 1982, and SM (2006) and PhD (2013) in management from MIT Sloan, where he was a Beyster Fellow and a Ford-MIT Energy Fellow.

Phil Budden is a Senior Lecturer at MIT's Management School, in Sloan's TIES (Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management) Group, where he focuses on innovation ecosystems around the world, their key stakeholders, and especially, ‘corporate innovation’.

Phil co-teaches in the successful 'Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program' (REAP), an MIT global program for teams from around the globe interested in accelerating 'innovation-driven entrepreneurship'; in his related class, known as the 'Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration for Leaders' (REAL: 15.364); and on similar topics—especially ‘corporate innovation’—in a variety of executive degree and ExecEd settings. 

Phil's approach combines academic, historical, and real-world perspectives on how different stakeholders—including entrepreneurs, universities, and 'risk capital' providers, alongside corporate enterprises and government policymakers—can all contribute to building successful innovation ecosystems. His background as a diplomat makes him well-suited to the 'global innovation' of REAP/REAL, the interplay among the stakeholders, and the negotiations within the 'innovation ecosystems' (especially for Corporate and Government stakeholders).

Prior to MIT, Phil had served as a British diplomat (1993-2013), with his first decade focused on Britain's membership of the European Union (EU), involving its key economic, financial, and technology policies.  After 9/11, his second decade as a British diplomat was spent in the US: first at the British Embassy in Washington (2002-2007), focused on transatlantic economic and business issues, including technology security, international science, and innovation links, and trade policy; and later based in Boston (2007-2012) as Her Britannic Majesty's Consul General to New England.

Phil holds a BA and MA in history from Lincoln College, the University of Oxford; an MA in history and government from Cornell University; and a PhD (DPhil) in history and international political economy from the University of Oxford.

John Liu is the Principal Investigator of the MIT Learning Engineering and Practice (LEAP) Group, which applies design principles to solving challenges to better meet the increasing demand for STEM skills in tomorrow’s workforce. He is a Digital Learning Lab Scientist and a Lecturer in MIT's Mechanical Engineering department. He leads education and workforce development efforts for MIT's new initiative: Manufacturing@MIT. He was the Director of the Principles of Manufacturing MicroMasters program, an online certificate program that has now enrolled over 200,000 learners across the globe. Dr. Liu's work includes engineering education, mixed reality and haptic experiences, workforce solutions to address the nation-wide manufacturing skills need, open-ended assessments for scalable education settings, and instructional design theory for massively open online courses. He received Best Paper Awards at the American Society Engineering Education (ASEE) in 2020. Dr. Liu earned his B.S. in Applied Physics from Caltech and S.M. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, under an MIT-SUTD fellowship and NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.