In this 3-part webinar series, We will explore the Future of Manufacturing with specific focus on:
Join us March 2nd, 3rd and 4th, in this exclusive events series featuring MIT experts, startups and Industry Executive through presentations of the latest MIT research, up-and-coming technologies, and interactive panel discussions between academic and industrials.
Randall S. Wright is a program director with MIT's Industrial Liaison Program. He manages the interface between the managements of companies, headquartered in the United States and Europe, and the senior administration and faculty of MIT.
As a program director for MIT, he convenes teams of researchers and faculty members to provide on-going emerging technology intelligence and strategic advice for the world's leading technology companies. He is a sought-after speaker, delivering keynote speeches focused on emerging technology opportunities and challenges, and counter-intuitive insights in executive panels and discussions. Randall draws on extensive experience advising executives on a range of emerging technology areas including digital transformation, big data, robotics, green buildings, water efficiency, energy storage, biofuels, advanced materials, and manufacturing. He provides navigation and recommendations on the emerging technologies and adoption landscapes critical to future business growth, as well as creation, development, and execution of programs of research between industry and MIT.
Randall has been bestowed by Federal President of Austria Dr. Heinz Fischer with the decoration Cross of Honor in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria for his "outstanding contribution to the development of relations between Austria and MIT".
Prior to MIT, Randall was a marketing manager for Pfizer, Inc., a major U.S. pharmaceuticals company. He was also a strategic planning analyst for Pennzoil Company--a Fortune 500 oil and natural resources company. Randall is an invited lecturer at Northeastern University's Executive M.B.A. Program where he lectures on innovation and corporate strategy. His column Innovation Counterculture looks at ideas and perspectives on strategy, organization, and thinking to help executives connect to the world of innovation outside their organizations and he is published regularly in Research-Technology Management, the award-winning journal of the Industrial Research Institute.
Associate Director, MIT.nano Director, Immersion Lab Co-Director, Advanced Manufacturing and Design Program Technology Director, MIT Center for Clinical and Translational Research
Dr. Anthony is an expert in designing instruments and techniques to monitor, measure, and control complex physical systems. His work integrates mechanical, electrical, and optical engineering with computer science and optimization to deliver innovative solutions across various manufacturing industries.
The core of Dr. Anthony’s research lies in computational instrumentation—the development of tools and methods to monitor and control intricate systems in fields like manufacturing and medical diagnostics. His work includes creating advanced measurement and instrumentation solutions for both manufacturing systems and medical imaging technologies.
Beyond academia, Dr. Anthony brings extensive experience in technology innovation, product realization, and business entrepreneurship, particularly at the convergence of information technology and advanced manufacturing. He has over 25 years of experience driving market-driven technology solutions from concept to commercialization. His achievements include winning an Emmy Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for broadcast technical innovation.
In the classroom, Dr. Anthony focuses on teaching the modeling of large-scale systems for decision-making across various domains. He is also deeply involved in developing optimization algorithms and software for analyzing and designing these systems. His dual experience in academia and industry positions him as a leader in translating cutting-edge research into practical, impactful technologies.
Dr. Duane S. Boning is the Clarence J. LeBel Professor in Electrical Engineering, and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the EECS Department at MIT. He is affiliated with the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories, and serves as MTL Associate Director for Computation and CAD. He is also the Engineering Faculty Co-Director of the MIT Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program, serving in that role since September 2016. From 2004 to 2011, he served as Associate Head of the EECS Department at MIT. From 2011 through 2013 he was the Director/Faculty Lead of the MIT Skoltech Initiative, and from 2011 through July 2018, he was the faculty Director of the MIT/Masdar Institute Cooperative Program.
Dr. Boning received his S.B. degrees in electrical engineering and in computer science in 1984, and his S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering in 1986 and 1991, respectively, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was an NSF Fellow from 1984 to 1989, and an Intel Graduate Fellow in 1990. From 1991 to 1993 he was a Member Technical Staff at the Texas Instruments Semiconductor Process and Design Center in Dallas, Texas, where he worked on semiconductor process representation, process/device simulation tool integration, and statistical modeling and optimization.
Dr. Boning is a Fellow of the IEEE, and has served as Editor in Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing, and as chairman of the CFI/Technology CAD Framework Semiconductor Process Representation Working Group. He is a member of the IEEE, Electrochemical Society, Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi, Materials Research Society, Sigma Xi, and the Association of Computing Machinery.
Meter: Next-generation volumetric imaging for manufacturing inspection
Katie earned her BS in Materials Science and Engineering at The Ohio State University in 2015. During her time there, she was an undergraduate research assistant in the Welding and Joining Metallurgy Group and did research internships in Germany and Cambridge, UK. This led to a PhD in Engineering at the University of Cambridge (completed in 2019) as a Cambridge Trust scholar, working with Prof. Julian Allwood on end-of-life steel recycling. She is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT with Professors Antoine Allanore and Elsa Olivetti, continuing in the realm of industrial ecology, but also gaining laboratory experience in high temperature electrochemistry. Achievements she is particularly proud of include authoring the top policy paper in Environmental Science and Technology (2017), and extracting copper and iron from natural concentrate in the lab using only electricity. She is a third-generation materials scientist and wants to spend her career improving the management of Earth’s resources.
Professor Hardt is a graduate of Lafayette College (BSME, 1972) and MIT (SM, PhD, 1978). He has been a member of the Mechanical Engineering faculty at MIT since 1979. His teaching focuses on control, dynamics and manufacturing processes. His disciplinary focus is system dynamics and control, as applied to manufacturing at both the process and system level.
Dr. Hardt has served as Director of the MIT Laboratory for Manufacturing and as Engineering Co-Director for the MIT Leaders for Manufacturing Program. He is currently leader of the Manufacturing Systems and Technology Program, part of distance teaching and research collaboration between MIT and Singapore.
Dr. Hardt also serves as the Graduate Officer for the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Eureka Robotics: Enabling High Accuracy – High Agility automation
Cuong is a Co-founder of Eureka Robotics, and an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at NTU, Singapore. He is an alumnus of École Normale Supérieure, rue d’Ulm, and holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Sorbonne University, France. He was a recipient of the Best Paper Award at the conference Robotics: Science and Systems in 2012, led NTU's prize-winning team at the Airbus Shopfloor Challenge in 2016, and received the IEEE N3XT® Star award as a Co-founder of Eureka Robotics in 2019.
Wojciech Matusik is a professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and leads the Computational Fabrication Group at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His research interests are in computer graphics, computational design and fabrication, computer vision, robotics and human-computer interaction. Before coming to MIT, he worked at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Adobe Systems and Disney Research Zurich. He has received a Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Excellence in Teaching, a DARPA Young Faculty Award and a Sloan Foundation fellowship. He has been named one of the world's top 100 young innovators by MIT Technology Review and received a Significant New Researcher Award from ACM Siggraph. He earned a PhD in computer graphics at MIT.
Professor of the Practice, MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning Former Executive Director, MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future and IPC Former Special Assistant to the President for Manufacturing and Economic Development
Elisabeth B. Reynolds, Ph.D., is Professor of the Practice at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning. She was Special Assistant to President Biden for Manufacturing and Economic Development at the National Economic Council (NEC, 2021-2022) where she helped lead the Administration’s work on national manufacturing strategy, supply chain resilience, and industrial strategy. Before working at the NEC, Reynolds was a Principal Research Scientist and executive director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center (2010-2021), an interdisciplinary research center focused on systems of innovation and industrial transformation. She also co-led the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future (2018-2021) which examined the relationship between emerging technologies and work. Reynolds’ work and research focus on systems of innovation and manufacturing including growing innovative firms to scale and digital technology adoption.
Reynolds has worked on rebuilding manufacturing capabilities in the U.S. in a number of capacities including advising three Massachusetts governors. She is on the board of the non-profits, Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) and the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI) as well as an advisor to the Special Competitive Studies Project, a Washington think tank focused on national security and critical technologies.
Realtime Robotics: Autonomous Motion Planning and Spatial Perception for Industrial Automation
Dr. Richard D. Braatz is the Edwin R. Gilliland Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, where he conducts research into advanced biomanufacturing systems. He is the Director of the Center on Continuous mRNA Manufacturing and leads process data analytics, mechanistic modeling, and control systems for projects on vaccine, monoclonal antibody, and gene therapy manufacturing. Dr. Braatz received an M.S. and Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology and was the Millennium Chair and Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University before moving to MIT. Dr. Braatz has collaborated with more than 20 companies, including Novartis, Pfizer, Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Biogen, Amgen, Takeda, and Abbott Labs. He has published over 300 papers and three books. Dr. Braatz is a Fellow of IEEE, IFAC, AIChE, and AAAS and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.
Marty Culpepper, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is MIT’s first Maker Czar. He leads MIT’s effort to upgrade legacy spaces/equipment, introduce new technologies, create new campus makerspaces, foster maker communities, and collaborate with peer universities, alumni, government, and industry. Professor Culpepper is the recipient of an NSF Presidential Early Career Award, two R&D 100 awards, a TR100 award, and a Joel and Ruth Spira Teaching Award. His areas of expertise are in Precision Engineering, Manufacturing, and Thermo/Fluid system design.
He is a self-described gear head who loves working on his Ducati and Mustang, but not as much as riding/driving them. He loves building things at MIT and at home in his own shop. His favorite maker tools are mills and waterjets, though he’s become fond of glass blowing.
Akasha Imaging: "See it, Build it!" Perception Solutions for Manufacturing
Kartik Venkataraman is CEO of Akasha Imaging, a computational imaging and deep learning startup in Palo Alto, California that is focused on robotic automation in manufacturing and inspection. His interests lie in commercializing deep technology in the areas of computer vision and imaging with specific focus on business development, product management, and strategic planning. He was previously CTO and Founder of Pelican Imaging that focused on computational array cameras for the mobile imaging market and which was later acquired by Xperi Corporation. Prior to founding Pelican, Kartik headed the Computational Camera group at Micron Imaging (Aptina), and held senior research roles at Intel in 3D and medical imaging where he worked on joint programs with Johns Hopkins Medical School, and the Institute for Systems Science in Singapore. He is a recognized thought leader in the imaging field and holds more than 50 patents in the areas connected to computational imaging. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of California, Santa Cruz, MS in Computer Engineering from University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and B.Tech (Honors) in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.
Jerry McAfee Professor of Engineering MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Markus J. Buehler, Jerry McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT, is a leading researcher in materials science and the mechanics of natural and biological protein materials. Markus' expertise spans large-scale atomistic modeling, the interaction of chemistry and mechanics, and the development of multiscale simulation tools. He recently co-developed a method that uses artificial intelligence to generate new protein designs with specific strengths, mimicking natural materials like silk. This approach, which uses computer simulations for testing, allows the creation of proteins with desired mechanical properties, such as strength and flexibility, beyond what is naturally available. Markus earned a Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research at the University of Stuttgart and held post-doctoral appointments at both Caltech and MIT.
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