MIT Professional Education Short Programs

Executives, managers, and practitioners worldwide come to courses offered by MIT Professional Education - Short Programs to gain crucial knowledge and take home applicable skills. Short Programs students learn from MIT faculty who are leaders in their fields from applied nanotechnology to energy to transportation systems. You can spend five days studying controlled-release drug delivery with the biomedical engineering professor who invented it. Or focus a week on cryptography or network coding with pioneers in the field. Let MIT Professional Education - Short Programs help you take the lead in your organization.

Short Programs attendees come from across the U.S. and around the world. About 30 percent are international; another 20 percent come from New England states. Most are mid-career technical, scientific, business, and government professionals in their 20s through 50s who wish to advance their careers.

Short Programs offers more than 50 courses in two-to-five day sessions, primarily in the summer. These intensive courses combine MIT’s breakthrough research with insights from industry, government, and academic participants. These courses sharpen each participant’s ability to succeed in a rapidly changing world.

Courses are designed to allow participants to absorb working knowledge fast. Classes may involve lectures, discussions, readings, interactive problem-solving, or laboratory work. Participants learn from leading faculty and collaborate with peers. Some participants come to acquire the fundamentals of a technical topic such as fermentation technology, precision engineering, or internal combustion engines. Some come to learn about advances in renewable energy, network coding, or nanotechnology. Others delve into supply chain network design, data-driven marketing, or high-speed imaging. All participants can leave Short Programs with new career tools and insights about the impact of evolving technologies.

Short Programs, founded in 1949 as the MIT Summer Institute and then called the Professional Institute through 2008, brings more than 900 participants to campus each year. Recent students have come from Amgen, Biogen Idec., the Canadian DND, Genentech, Korea Electric Power Corporation, Los Alamos National Lab, MITRE, Motorola, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Department of Defense, and Volkswagen of Mexico.