2017 MIT Research and Development Conference

Karl Koster is the Executive Director of MIT Corporate Relations. MIT Corporate Relations includes the MIT Industrial Liaison Program and MIT Startup Exchange.

In that capacity, Koster and his staff work with the leadership of MIT and senior corporate executives to design and implement strategies for fostering corporate partnerships with the Institute. Koster and his team have also worked to identify and design a number of major international programs for MIT, which have been characterized by the establishment of strong, programmatic linkages among universities, industry, and governments. Most recently these efforts have been extended to engage the surrounding innovation ecosystem, including its vibrant startup and small company community, into MIT's global corporate and university networks.

Koster is also the Director of Alliance Management in the Office of Strategic Alliances and Technology Transfer (OSATT). OSATT was launched in Fall 2019 as part of a plan to reinvent MIT’s research administration infrastructure. OSATT develops agreements that facilitate MIT projects, programs and consortia with industrial, nonprofit, and international sponsors, partners and collaborators.

He is past chairman of the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership (UIDP), an organization that seeks to enhance the value of collaborative partnerships between universities and corporations.

He graduated from Brown University with a BA in geology and economics, and received an MS from MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to returning to MIT, Koster worked as a management consultant in Europe, Latin America, and the United States on projects for private and public sector organizations.

Victor (Vic) Abate was named GE’s Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President in September 2015. Vic is responsible for one of the world's largest and most diversified industrial research and technology organizations.

Vic leads 50,000 engineers across GE and 2,000 scientists at GE Global Research. GE Global Research is where GE’s next breakthrough inventions are born, fueling the company's long-range technology needs. Research facilities are located in the United States, India, China, Germany and Brazil, working in collaboration with GE businesses around the world.

In his previous role, Vic served as the President & CEO of Gas Power Systems for GE Power, overseeing worldwide operations of GE’s heavy-duty gas turbine, steam turbine, generator and controls businesses. In this role, he led the development of GE’s HA gas turbine, which powers the world’s most efficient combined cycle power plant, located in France. The business has the largest delivered fleet of gas turbines in the world with more than 7,400 turbines operating in 112 countries and manufacturing in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

From 2005 to 2013, Vic was President & CEO of GE’s Renewable Energy business, one of the world’s leading suppliers of renewable energy technology. In this role, Vic led the development and launch of GE’s 1.6-100 onshore wind turbine and GE’s 2.5-120 brilliant wind turbine, both of which were recognized as game changing products in the industry.

Vic began his GE career in 1990 and has held several management roles in engineering, services, production, and quality. In 1996, he led the large turbine generator business as the quality leader and was subsequently appointed general manager of generator technology. In 1999, Vic assumed responsibility for leading the gas turbine volume ramp up in GE’s Power Generation segment, and in late 2000 he was appointed general manager of steam turbine technology. In 2003, he became a GE company officer as the vice president of technology for power generation, which included technology for gas, steam, wind, solar, and hydro-turbine generators, gasification technologies, and integrated gasification combined cycle.

Prior to joining GE, Vic worked for Allied Signal and Zurn Industries and was responsible for mechanical drive technology and new product development.

Vic is a member of the Board of Directors of UI Labs and previously served as President of the Board of Directors of the American Wind Energy Association.

Originally from Williamstown, Massachusetts, he holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Union College, and an M.B.A. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He and his wife Karen have four children and reside in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Ernest J. Moniz served as the thirteenth United States Secretary of Energy from 2013 to January 2017. As Secretary, he advanced energy technology innovation, nuclear security and strategic stability, cutting-edge capabilities for the American scientific research community, and environmental stewardship. He strengthened the Department of Energy (DOE) strategic partnership with its seventeen national laboratories and with the Department of Defense and the broader national security establishment. Specific accomplishments included producing analytically-based energy policy proposals that attracted bipartisan support and implementing legislation, leading an international initiative that placed energy science and technology innovation at the center of the global response to climate change, and negotiating alongside the Secretary of State the historic Iran nuclear agreement. He reorganized a number of DOE program elements, elevated sound project and risk management, and strengthened enterprise-wide management to improve mission outcomes.

Dr. Moniz served on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty from 1973 until becoming Secretary of Energy in 2013 and is now the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems emeritus and Special Advisor to the MIT President. He has been named co-chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a non-profit organization that has advanced innovative solutions for securing nuclear materials, building international cooperation for nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, preventing the spread of disease and reducing radiological threats. He is the inaugural Distinguished Fellow of the Emerson Collective and CEO of the non-profit Energy Futures Initiative.

Dr. Moniz previously served in government as DOE Under Secretary from 1997 until January 2001 with science, energy and nuclear security responsibilities and from 1995 to 1997 as Associate Director for Science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy with responsibility for the physical, life and social sciences. He was a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and of the Defense Threat Reduction Advisory Committee from 2009 to 2013. He also served on the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future that provided advice to the President and the Secretary of Energy, particularly on nuclear waste management.

At MIT, Dr. Moniz was the Founding Director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and Director of the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment. MITEI grew to involve over a quarter of the faculty across the entire Institute, launched new educational programs for energy, and established novel models for industry-faculty engagement that simultaneously provided individualized company research portfolios with a common approach that lifted the entire energy enterprise. Dr. Moniz is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Harvard Belfer Center.

Dr. Moniz was also Head of the MIT Department of Physics during 1991-1995 and 1997 and Director of the Bates Linear Accelerator Center from 1983-1991. His physics research centered on developing the theoretical framework for understanding intermediate energy electron and meson interactions with atomic nuclei. Since 2001, his primary research focus has been energy technology and policy, including a leadership role in MIT multidisciplinary technology and policy studies addressing pathways to a low-carbon world (Future of Nuclear Power, of Coal, of Natural Gas and of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle). These studies had significant impact on energy policy and programs.

Dr. Moniz received a Bachelor of Science degree summa cum laude in physics from Boston College, a doctorate in theoretical physics from Stanford University, and nine honorary doctorates1, including three from European universities. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the International Advisory Board of the Atlantic Council and received the 1998 Seymour Cray HPCC Industry Recognition Award for vision and leadership in advancing scientific simulation. Among other awards, he is the recipient of the Distinguished Public Service Medals of the Department of Defense and of the Navy. He also was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Makarios III (Cyprus) and of the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator (Portugal). Other awards include the Charles Percy Award of the Alliance to Save Energy, the Right Stuff Award of the Blue-Green Alliance Foundation, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Distinguished Public Service Award, and the Neustadt Award of the Harvard Kennedy School for creating exceptional solutions to significant problems in public policy. He is a Fellow of the American Physics Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Humboldt Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Moniz served on the Board of Directors of both publicly traded and private companies in the energy and security sectors. He also served on the Boards of several non-profit energy industry organizations and as a high-level advisor to several energy-related companies and investment firms.

Dr. Moniz is a resident of Brookline Massachusetts with his wife Naomi, their daughter Katya, and grandchildren Alex and Eve. He is a very modestly accomplished but very enthusiastic practitioner of fly-fishing.

Robie I. Samanta Roy is vice president of Technology Strategy and Innovation at Lockheed Martin. Dr. Samanta Roy’s primary responsibilities include: 1) developing and providing technical intelligence and strategy for the corporation; 2) engaging the global S&T ecosystem outside the corporation – including government labs, universities, large and small businesses, and startups; and 3) fostering cross-enterprise innovation within the corporation. In this role, he works with leaders from across the Corporation to develop and actively manage enterprise technology roadmaps aligned with customer and business area needs. Dr. Samanta Roy also serves as a liaison with government and non-government organizations critical to the formation of S&T policy and the execution of research.

Prior to joining Lockheed Martin, Dr. Samanta Roy was a professional staff member with the Senate Armed Services Committee from 2010 to 2014 with the portfolio of the Department of Defense’s wide spectrum of science and technology-related activities. He came to that position from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where he was the assistant director for Space and Aeronautics from 2005 to 2009 and was responsible for space and aeronautics activities ranging from human space flight to the Next Generation Air Transportation System. Dr. Samanta Roy previously served as a Strategic Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office and as a Research Staff Member in the Systems Evaluation Division of the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia.

Dr. Samanta Roy earned his Bachelor of Science, Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT. He earned a master’s degree in space policy from George Washington University and diplomas from the International Space University and Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris.

Dr. Samanta Roy is an Associate Fellow and member of the Board of Trustees of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a member of the National Research Council’s Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board. He also chairs the Industry Relations Committee of the International Astronautical Federation and serves on the Board of Visitors for the University of Maryland’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences and on the FAA’s Drone Advisory Committee. Dr. Samanta Roy continues to serve in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.

Trond heads up the Startup Initiative at MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program (ILP), facilitating productive relationships between industry and MIT’s startup ecosystem. He is a former Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Trond is a serial entrepreneur with Scandinavian roots, and is currently the Founder of Yegii, Inc., the insight network, and Managing Director of Tautec Consulting.

Trond is a leading expert on technology development across industries such as IT, Energy, and Healthcare. His knowledge spans entrepreneurship, strategy frameworks, policy making, action learning, virtual teamwork, knowledge management, standardization, and e-government. He wrote the book Leadership From Below (2008). Trond speaks six languages and is a frequent public speaker on business, technology, and wine.

Trond was a Strategy/business development executive at Oracle Corp. (2008-12), and a policy maker in the EU (2004-8) where he built the ePractice.eu web platform with 120,000 members. He has worked with multinational companies, with mid-caps and startups in Brazil, China, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Norway, the UK, and the US. He has a PhD in Multidisciplinary Technology Studies from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Max Shulaker began as assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2016, where he leads the Novels (Novel Electronic Systems Group) at MIT. Prior to joining MIT, he was at Stanford University where he received his BS, Masters, and PhD in Electrical Engineering. Shulaker’s research interests include the broad area of nanosystems. His research group focuses on understanding and optimizing multidisciplinary interactions across the entire computing stack – from low-level synthesis of nanomaterials, to fabrication processes and circuit design for emerging nanotechnologies, up to new architectures – to enable the next generation of high performance and energy-efficient computing systems. His research results include the demonstration of the first carbon nanotube computer(highlighted on the cover of Nature and presented as a Research Highlight to the US Congress by the US NSF), the first digital sub-systems built entirely using carbon nanotube transistors (awarded the ISSCC Jack Raper Award for Outstanding Technology Directions Paper), the first monolithically-integrated 3D integrated circuits combining arbitrary vertical stacking of logic and memory, the highest performance carbon nanotube transistors to-date, and the first highly-scaled carbon nanotube transistors fabricated in a VLSI-compatible manner.

Timothy M. Swager is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry the Department of Chemistry at MIT and the Faculty Director of the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation. In this latter role, Professor Swager works with the Center’s Executive Director to define the Center’s strategy for fostering innovation, assists with the commercialization of MIT technologies, and plays a key role in the grant selection process. Professor Swager also serves as the Center’s liaison to the MIT academic community, and senior leadership, sitting on faculty and academic committees. Following Professor Swager’s postdoctoral appointment at MIT, he joined the chemistry faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, returning to MIT in 1996 as a Professor of Chemistry, and served as the Head of Chemistry from 2005-2010. Professor Swager’s research interests are in design, synthesis, and study of organic-based electronic, sensory, high-strength and liquid crystalline materials. He has published more than 400 peer-reviewed papers and more than 80 issued/pending patents. Professor Swager is the founder of four companies (DyNuPol, Iptyx, PolyJoule, and C2Sense) and has served on a number of corporate and government boards.He received a B.S. from Montana State University in 1983 and a Ph.D., from the California Institute of Technology in 1988.

Dirk Englund received his BS in Physics from Caltech in 2002. After a Fulbright fellowship at T.U. Eindhoven, he completed an MS in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Applied Physics at Stanford University in 2008. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, he joined Columbia University as Assistant Professor of E.E. and of Applied Physics. He joined the MIT EECS faculty in 2013. Recent recognitions include the 2011 PECASE, the 2011 Sloan Fellowship in Physics, the 2012 DARPA Young Faculty Award, the 2017 ACS Photonics Young Investigator Award, and the OSA's 2017 Adolph Lomb Medal, a Bose Research Fellowship in 2018, and a 2020 Humboldt Research Fellowship.

Daniel Weitzner is the Director of the MIT CSAIL Decentralized Information Group and teaches Internet public policy in MIT’s Computer Science Department. His research includes development of accountable systems architectures to enable the Web to be more responsive to policy requirements.

From 20011-2012, Weitzner was the United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Internet Policy in the White House. He led initiatives on privacy, cybersecurity, Internet copyright, and trade policies promoting the free flow of information,. He was responsible for the Obama Administration’s Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights and the OECD Internet Policymaking Principles.

Weitzner has been a leader in the development of Internet public policy from its inception, making fundamental contributions to the successful fight for strong online free expression protection in the United States Supreme Court, and for laws that control government surveillance of email and web browsing data.

Weitzner is a founder of the Center for Democracy and Technology, led the World Wide Wed Consortium’s public policy activities, and was Deputy Policy Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In 2012 he was named to the Newsweek/Daily Beast Digital Power Index as a top ‘Navigator’ of global Internet public policy and in 2013 he received the International Association of Privacy Professional’s Leadership Award.

David Clark is a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where he has worked since receiving his Ph.D. there in 1973. Since the mid 70s, Dr. Clark has been leading the development of the Internet; from 1981-1989 he acted as Chief Protocol Architect in this development and chaired the Internet Activities Board. His current research looks at re-definition of the architectural underpinnings of the Internet and the relation of technology and architecture to economic, societal and policy considerations. He is helping the U.S. National Science foundation organize their Future Internet Design program. Dr. Clark is past chairman of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academies and has contributed to a number of studies on the societal and policy impact of computer communications. He is co-director of the MIT Communications Futures Program, a project for industry collaboration and coordination along the communications value chain.

Vinod Vaikuntanathan is the Steven and Renee Finn Career Development Associate Professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at MIT.

Vaikuntanathan studies cryptography, a topic of ever-increasing importance in modern society. He has made breakthroughs that bring us much closer to being able to compute on encrypted data, important for secure cloud computing, as well as in functional cryptography, the ability to share only some parts of an encrypted system. He has won numerous awards, including a Sloan Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, and a Microsoft Faculty Fellowship. He is a gifted teacher, and he has a strong record of service within his research community.

Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he is also head of the Global Economics and Management group and chair of the Sloan Fellows MBA Program Committee. He cofounded and currently leads the popular Global Entrepreneurship Lab (GLAB) course – over the past 16 years, MBA students in GLAB have worked on more than 500 projects with start-up companies around the world.

He also works closely with Joi Ito, head of MIT’s Media Lab, on the Digital Currency Initiative (DCI). Specifically, Johnson supervises research projects related to blockchain technology, and teaches a course (with Michael Casey and Brian Forde) on this fast developing business sector. Johnson is not an investor in bitcoin or any bitcoin-related startups, but he works closely with MIT students and others who want to build better companies.

Johnson is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., a cofounder of BaselineScenario.com, and a member since inception of the FDIC’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee. In July 2014, Johnson joined the Financial Research Advisory Committee of the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research (OFR); he chairs the recently formed Global Vulnerabilities Working Group.

Johnson has been a member of the private sector Systemic Risk Council since it was founded by Sheila Bair in 2012; this group is now chaired by Sir Paul Tucker. From April 2009 to April 2015, he was a member of the Congressional Budget Office's Panel of Economic Advisers. In March 2016, Johnson was the third Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Central Bank of Barbados.

“For his articulate and outspoken support for public policies to end too-big-to-fail”, Johnson was named a Main Street Hero by the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) in 2013. In April 2015, the Washington Examiner placed Johnson at #11 on their list of New Voices for 2015. In November 2015, Johnson joined the advisory council of Intelligence2 Debates.

Over the past seven years, Johnson has published more than 300 high impact pieces in the New York Times, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New Republic, BusinessWeek, The Huffington Post, The Financial Times, and Project Syndicate.

“The Quiet Coup” received over a million views when it appeared in The Atlantic in early 2009. His book 13 Bankers: the Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (with James Kwak), was an immediate bestseller and has become one of the mostly highly regarded books on the financial crisis. Their follow-up book on U.S. fiscal policy, White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters for You, won praise across the political spectrum. Johnson’s academic research on economic development, corporate finance, and political economy is widely cited.

From March 2007 through the end of August 2008, Johnson was the International Monetary Fund's Economic Counsellor (chief economist) and Director of its Research Department. He also helped to found and run the NBER Africa Project; four volumes are forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press.

Johnson holds a B.A. in economics and politics from the University of Oxford, an M.A. in economics from the University of Manchester, and a Ph.D. in economics from MIT.

Professor John E. Fernández is a professor in the Department of Architecture at MIT, affiliated with the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and a practicing architect. Fernández is also Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Environmental Solutions Initiative, enlisting the capacity of the MIT community in the transition to a net zero carbon, biodiverse and equitable future.

Fernández founded and currently directs the MIT Urban Metabolism Group and is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Commission on BiodiverCities by 2030, the Urban Climate Change Research Network, and the Leadership Team of Oceanvisions. He has published on a wide range of subjects, from sustainable cities, urban biodiversity, design, and more, and is the author of two books and numerous articles in scientific and design journals, including Science, the Journal of Industrial Ecology, Building and Environment, Energy Policy and others, and author of nine book chapters. He is formerly Chair of Sustainable Urban Systems for the International Society of Industrial Ecology and Director of the MIT Building Technology Program from 2010 to 2015.

Professor Olivetti received a BS in engineering science from the University of Virginia in 2000, and a PhD in materials science and engineering from MIT in 2007. She spent her PhD program studying the electrochemistry of polymer and inorganic materials for electrodes in lithium-ion batteries. In 2014, she joined DMSE as an assistant professor. As an educator, Olivetti overhauled DMSE’s undergraduate curriculum and developed new courses, including one for the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium Climate Scholars. She’s a member of the MIT Climate Nucleus and co-director of the MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium.

Professor Elsa Olivetti’s research focuses on improving the environmental and economic sustainability of materials. Specifically, she develops analytical and computational models to provide early-stage information on the cost and environmental impact of materials. Professor Olivetti and her research-group colleagues work toward improving sustainability through increased use of recycled and renewable materials, recycling-friendly material design, and intelligent waste disposition. The Olivetti Group also focuses on understanding the implications of substitution, dematerialization, and waste mining on materials markets. 

Scott P. Willoughby is the Northrop Grumman vice president and program manager for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Willoughby has more than 27 years of experience in the aerospace industry. He received a bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in electrical engineering from Lehigh University in 1989 and a master’s degree in communication systems from the University of Southern California in 1991. He is also a graduate of the UCLA Executive Program at the Anderson School of Management.

Sara Seager received her B.Sc. in mathematics and physics from the University of Toronto in 1994. She earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University in 1999, where she investigated recombination in the early Universe before moving to the then brand-new field of exoplanets. Seager was a long-term member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, and a senior research staff member at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C., before joining the MIT faculty in 2007. Seager was awarded the American Astronomical Society’s Helen B. Warner prize in 2007 for her work on exoplanet atmospheres.

Kevin Esvelt is director of the Sculpting Evolution group, which invents new ways to study and influence the evolution of ecosystems. By carefully developing and testing these methods with openness and humility, the group seeks to address difficult ecological problems for the benefit of humanity and the natural world.

Prior to joining the MIT Media Lab, Esvelt wove many different areas of science into novel approaches to ecological engineering. He invented phage-assisted continuous evolution (PACE), a synthetic microbial ecosystem for rapidly evolving biomolecules, in the laboratory of David R. Liu at Harvard University. At the Wyss Institute, he worked with George Church to develop the CRISPR system for genome engineering and regulation, and he began exploring the use of bacteriophages and conjugation to engineer microbial ecosystems.

Esvelt is credited as the first to describe how CRISPR gene drives could be used to alter the traits of wild populations in an evolutionarily stable manner. And recently, he and his Sculpting Evolution group devised a new form of technology, called ‘daisy drives’, which would let communities aiming to prevent disease alter wild organisms in local ecosystems.

By emphasizing universal safeguards and early transparency, he has worked to ensure that community discussions always precede and guide the development of technologies that will impact the shared environment.

David Sun Kong is a Synthetic Biologist, community organizer, musician, and photographer based in Lexington, MA. He is the Director of the MIT Media Lab's new Community Biotechnology Initiative. Our mission: empowering communities through biotechnology.

David is a pioneer in developing "lab-on-a-chip" technologies for synthetic biology and a leader in the global community biology movement. He conducted his graduate studies at MIT’s Media Lab, receiving a Master's degree for developing technology for printing nanostructures with energetic beams and a Ph.D. for demonstrating the first gene synthesis in a microfluidic (“lab-on-a-chip”) system. He was recognized as an emerging leader in synthetic biology as a "LEAP" fellow, served as a guest faculty member at the Marine Biology Lab in Woods Hole, MA, and is co-founder and managing faculty of "How To Grow (Almost) Anything, an international course on synthetic biology. He founded and chaired new Microfluidic and Hardware Tracks for the International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition (iGEM) and is the official iGEM DJ. He was Technical Staff in the Bioengineering Systems & Technologies group at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and a founding member of the synthetic biology team. He is also the founder of Metafluidics, an open repository for fluidic systems.

He has also worked as a community organizer for more than a decade and is the founder and director of EMW, an art, technology, and community space in Cambridge, MA. EMW's mission is to empower communities through the transformative power of artistic expression. We emphasize serving marginalized communities and develop all of our programming with values rooted in social justice. Our community programs explore expressive forms ranging from poetry to electronic music, beatboxing to bio-hacking and more.

David has performed as a DJ, beat-boxer, vocalist, and rapper at hundreds of venues, including South by Southwest, the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and Brooklyn Bowl, where he opened for Tonight Show band-leader and hip hop legend Questlove. He is also an award-winning vocal arranger and producer. His photography has been exhibited at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian, the Japanese American National Museum, and other museums and galleries across the country.

Anantha P. Chandrakasan is dean of MIT’s School of Engineering, and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Read the News Office announcement (6/23/2017) of Chandrakasan's appointment to dean of the School of Engineering.

From July 2011 - July 2017, Chandrakasan was head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). During his six-year tenure as head of MIT’s largest academic department, Chandrakasan spearheaded a number of initiatives that opened opportunities for students, postdocs, and faculty to conduct research, explore entrepreneurial projects, and engage with EECS.

Anantha P. Chandrakasan received the B.S, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989, 1990, and 1994 respectively. Since September 1994, he has been with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, where he is currently the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Chandrakasan is a recipient of awards including the 2009 Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) University Researcher Award, the 2013 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits, an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven in 2016, and the UC Berkeley EE Distinguished Alumni Award. He was also recognized as the author with the highest number of publications in the 60-year history of the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), the foremost global forum for presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and systems-on-a-chip. A fellow of IEEE, in 2015 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Chandrakasan leads the MIT Energy-Efficient Circuits and Systems Group, whose research projects have addressed security hardware, energy harvesting, and wireless charging for the internet of things; energy-efficient circuits and systems for multimedia processing; and platforms for ultra-low-power biomedical electronics.

He is a co-author of Low Power Digital CMOS Design (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), Digital Integrated Circuits (Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2003, 2nd edition), and Sub-threshold Design for Ultra-Low Power Systems (Springer 2006).

Chandrakasan is an IEEE Fellow. He has served in various roles for the IEEE ISSCC including Program Chair, Signal Processing Sub-committee Chair, and Technology Directions Sub-committee Chair. He has been the Conference Chair of ISSCC since 2010. He was the Director of the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories from 2006 to 2011. From July 2011 through June 2017, he served as the the Head of the MIT EECS Department. He is currently the dean of MIT's School of Engineering.

In 2015, Andrew Plump, M.D., Ph.D., joined Takeda as Chief Medical and Scientific Officer (CMSO). Dr. Plump also serves as a member of Takeda’s Executive Team and of the company’s Board of Directors. In his position, he leads Takeda’s global Research & Development organization, where he provides strategic direction and oversight.

Dr. Plump brings an unwavering focus on patients and a deep commitment to innovation and positive change in the healthcare industry. To continue and accelerate Takeda’s R&D successes, he leads an organization that focuses on people and partnerships, modality diversification, and translational medicine and genomics.

Prior to Takeda, Dr. Plump served as Senior Vice President, Research & Translational Medicine, Deputy to the President of R&D at Sanofi, where he was responsible for global research and translational medicine across all therapeutic areas.

Dr. Plump also spent more than 10 years at Merck in a Clinical Pharmacology group, working on programs in neurodegeneration, immunology, metabolism and infectious diseases. Following additional roles focusing on early development, genomics and biomarkers, particularly in cardiovascular and metabolism, he assumed the position of Vice President, Worldwide Cardiovascular (CV) Research Head. In this role, he had direct responsibility for preclinical development and research teams, and a leadership role in the end-to-end activities of the Merck cardiovascular portfolio. Together with his team, he helped discover and support a pipeline of novel therapies in atherosclerosis, vascular diseases and thrombosis.

Dr. Plump received his medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), his doctorate in cardiovascular genetics with Dr. Jan Breslow from the Rockefeller University, and his bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine and a fellowship in Medical Genetics at UCSF. Following his clinical training, Dr. Plump continued his scientific training in neuroscience as a Howard Hughes and Stanley J. Sarnoff postdoctoral fellow, with Dr. Marc Tessier-Lavigne, concurrently assuming faculty responsibilities as an Adjunct Clinical Instructor in the Department of Medical Genetics.

Charles Fine is the Chrysler Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management, a Professor of Operations Management and Engineering Systems, and the Co-Director of the International Motor Vehicle Program at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

His research focuses on supply chain strategy and value chain roadmapping, with a particular focus on fast-clockspeed manufacturing industries. Fine’s work has supported design and improvement of supply chain relationships for companies in electronics, automotive, aerospace, communications, and consumer products. His current research examines outsourcing dynamics, with a focus on dynamic models for assessing the leverage among the various components in complex industrial value chains and the principles for value chain design, based on strategic and logistical assessments.

At MIT Sloan, he teaches Operations Strategy and Supply Chain Management and directs the roadmapping activities in the Communications Futures Program. Fine teaches and consults widely with such clients as 3M, Accenture, Agile Software, Alcan, BellSouth, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bombardier, Caterpillar, Chrysler, Delphi Automotive, Deutsche Bank Alex Brown, Embraer, Fluor, GE, GM, Goodyear, HP, Honeywell, Intel, Kodak, Lucent, Mercury Computer, Merrill Lynch, Motorola, NCR, Nokia, Nortel, Oracle, Polaroid, PTC, Research-in-Motion, Rolls-Royce, Sematech, Teradyne, Toyota, TRW, Unilever, Volkswagen, Volvo, and Walsin Lihwa. He also serves on the board of directors for Greenfuel Technologies Corporation, a biotechnology company that he co-founded, which focuses on renewable energy. Fine also serves as co-director of an executive education program, Driving Strategic Innovation, which is a joint venture between MIT Sloan and IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland.

He is the author of Clockspeed: Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage (Perseus Books, 1998). His work on quality management, flexible manufacturing, supply chain management, and operations strategy has appeared in a variety of publications, including Management Science, Operations Research, Journal of Manufacturing and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Annals of Operations Research, Games and Economic Behavior, Sloan Management Review, Supply Chain Management Review, and Interfaces.

Fine holds an AB in mathematics and management science from Duke University as well as an MS in operations research and a PhD in business administration from Stanford University.

Daniela Rus is the Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. She brings deep expertise in robotics, artificial intelligence, data science and computation. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer, and the Association for Computing Machinery. She is also a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Career award, and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellowship. Rus earned her PhD in computer science from Cornell University.

Kent Larson directs the City Science (formerly Changing Places) group at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on developing urban interventions that enable more entrepreneurial, livable, high-performance districts in cities. To that end, his projects include advanced simulation and augmented reality for urban design, transformable micro-housing for millennials, mobility-on-demand systems that create alternatives to private automobiles, and Urban Living Lab deployments in Hamburg, Andorra, Taipei, and Boston.

Larson and researchers from his group received the “10-Year Impact Award” from UbiComp 2014. This is a “test of time” award for work that, with the benefit of hindsight, has had the greatest impact over the previous decade.

Larson practiced architecture for 15 years in New York City, with design work published in Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, Global Architecture, The New York Times, A+U, and Architectural Digest. The New York Times Review of Books selected his book, Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterworks (2000) as one of that year’s ten best books in architecture.

Venkat Sumantran is Chairman of Celeris Technologies, with more than thirty years of experience heading organizations in the auto industry in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Management expert James P. Womack, Ph.D., is the founder and senior advisor to the Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc., a nonprofit training, publishing, conference, and management research company chartered in August 1997 to advance a set of ideas known as lean production and lean thinking, based initially on Toyota’s business system and now being extended to an entire lean management system.

The intellectual basis for the Cambridge, MA-based Institute is described in a series of books and articles co-authored by Womack and Daniel Jones over the past 20 years. The most widely known books are: The Machine That Changed the World (Macmillan/Rawson Associates, 1990), Lean Thinking (Simon & Schuster, 1996), Lean Solutions (Simon & Schuster, 2005), and Seeing The Whole Value Stream (Lean Enterprise Institute, 2011). Articles include: "From Lean Production to the Lean Enterprise" (Harvard Business Review, March-April, 1994), "Beyond Toyota: How to Root Out Waste and Pursue Perfection" (Harvard Business Review, September-October, 1996), “Lean Consumption” (Harvard Business Review, March-April, 2005).

Womack received a B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago in 1970, a master's degree in transportation systems from Harvard in 1975, and a Ph.D. in political science from MIT in 1982 (for a dissertation on comparative industrial policy in the U.S., Germany, and Japan). During the period 1975-1991, he was a full-time research scientist at MIT directing a series of comparative studies of world manufacturing practices. As research director of MIT’s International Motor Vehicle Program, Womack led the research team that coined the term “lean production” to describe Toyota’s business system.

Womack served as the Institute's chairman and CEO from 1997 until 2010 when he was succeeded by John Shook.

Valerie J. Karplus is the Class of 1943 Career Development Professor and an Assistant Professor of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Karplus studies resource and environmental management in firms operating in diverse national and industry contexts, with a focus on the role of institutions and management practices in explaining performance. Karplus is an expert on China’s energy system, including technology and business model innovation, energy system governance, and the management of air pollution and climate change. She works with a collaborative team of researchers to study the micro and macro determinants of clean energy transitions in emerging markets, with a focus on China and India. She teaches Entrepreneurship without Borders, New Models for Global Business, and is currently developing a new course, together with Professor Chris Warshaw in Political Science, on Global Energy Markets and Policy.

She has previously worked in the development policy section of the German Federal Foreign Office in Berlin, Germany, as a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow, and in the biotechnology industry in Beijing, China, as a Luce Scholar. From 2011 to 2015, she directed the MIT-Tsinghua China Energy and Climate Project, a five-year research effort focused on analyzing the design of energy and climate change policy in China, and its domestic and global impacts. She is a faculty affiliate of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, the MIT Energy Initiative, and the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

Karplus holds a BS in biochemistry and political science from Yale University and a PhD in engineering systems from MIT.

Dr. Carlos Lima Azevedo is a Research Scientist at the ITSLab and the Executive Director of the Transportation Education Committee since February 2014. Before joining MIT, he was a Senior PostDoctoral Associate at SMART (Singapore) and a research scholar at LNEC (Portugal). His main research interests are the mathematical modeling and simulation of human mobility, smart mobility services, the development and assessment of new technologies in transportation systems and the statistical and data analysis of safety. The integrated simulation of travel behaviour and system performance in the presence of new smart mobility solultions is one of his active field of research.

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.

Niels Holten-Andersen, an Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, joined the MIT faculty in September 2012. He holds the B.Sc. in Biology from the University of Copenhagen, the B.Sc.Hon. in Molecular Biology from the University of Canterbury, the M.Sc. in Cell Biology from the University of Copenhagen, and the Ph.D. in Biomolecular Science and Engineering from the University of California-Santa Barbara. He was previously a post-doc at the University of Chicago; his work on cross-linking, self-healing soft matter, and bio-inspired materials will help to move the department in bold new directions.

Benedetto Marelli is the Paul M. Cook Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Marelli research group works on structural biopolymers and nanomanufacturing to design biomaterials with applications in precision agriculture, food security and food safety. The Marelli lab has recently developed new technologies to minimize food waste, enable agriculture in marginal lands, rapidly detect food contamination and precisely deliver payloads in plants. Benedetto has received several awards, including PECASE, NSF CAREER, ONR Young Investigator Award and ONR Director of Research Early Career Award. Benedetto has also joined the 2021-2023 New Voices Program promoted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Benedetto is the co-founder of Mori, a startup that aims at reducing food waste to extend the shelf-life of perishable food. Mori is based in Boston, MA and has raised more than US$36M in capital funding. 

Kalyan is a principal research scientist in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS, MIT). Previously he was a research scientist at CSAIL (CSAIL, MIT). His primary research interests are in machine learning and building large scale statistical models that enable discovery from large amounts of data. His research is at the intersection of big data, machine learning, and data science. He directs a research group called Data to AI in the new MIT Institute for Data Systems and Society (IDSS). The group is interested in big data science and machine learning, and is focused on how to solve foundational issues preventing artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions from reaching their full potential for societal applications.

Prof. Antoine Allanore has more than a decade of experience in the field of chemical metallurgy. Since 2004, as R&D engineer at ArcelorMittal in France, then at MIT since 2010, he has developed several alternative processes for metal extraction that adopt green chemistry principles. He co-founded Boston Electrometallurgical Corporation (BEMC) to engineer the large-scale development of such approaches. In 2012, he was appointed the T.B. King Assistant Professor of Metallurgy in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at MIT, where his research group aims at developing sustainable materials extraction and manufacturing processes. His group has proposed a novel approach to investigate and control water/mineral interactions in soils using microfluidics (Word Congress on Soils Science, Korea, 2014, PLOSOne, 2015). Focusing on mining and processing of unconventional resources (Journal of the Total Environment, 2015, Green Chemistry 2015), he invented a waste-free process to produce a potassium fertilizer from earth-abundant raw materials. The product has been designed to suit tropical soils and has succeeded crop-tests. It is now under field evaluation in Brazil (16th World Fertilizer Congress, Rio, 2014). He teaches thermodynamics and sustainable chemical metallurgy at both the undergraduate and graduate level. He was awarded the DeNora Prize in 2012 and the Early Career Faculty Fellow award in 2015, both from TMS (The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society).

Jennifer Rupp is the Thomas Lord Assistant Professor of Electrochemical Materials in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. Before she came to MIT, Prof. Rupp was a non-tenure-track assistant professor at ETH Zurich Switzerland where she held two prestigious, externally-funded career grants: an ERC Starting Grant (SNSF) and a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) professorship from 2012 on.

She previously was a visiting and senior scientist at MIT (2011-2012) and at the National Institute of Materials Science (NIMS) in Tsukuba Japan (2011), and worked as a postdoc at ETH Zurich (2006-2010). Professor Rupp team's current research interests are on solid-state material design and tuning of structure-property relations for novel energy and information devices and operation schemes. This ranges from alternative energy storage via batteries or catalytic convertor systems processed by smart material design for solar light and CO2 to renewable synthetic fuels, or novel types of neuromorphic memories and computing logic entities for data storage and transfer beyond transistors. Her team at MIT works on material design, creating novel processing techniques, and making ceramics, cermets, and glass-type ceramic structures. Her team also works on device prototypes, specifically their operation and characteristics.

She has published more than 70 papers, holds 4 patents, and enjoys actively discussing material tech trends on the theme of energy with the public, economists and policy makers. She is a frequent speaker and member of the World Economic Forum (2015-2017), and contirbutes to CNN and other television programs.

Professor Rupp and her team received several honors and awards such as the keynote lecture at the Nature Energy Conference 2016, "Top 40 international scientist under the age of 40" by World Economic Forum in 2015, Spark Award for the most innovative and economically important invention of the year at ETH Zurich, and Gordon Research lecture in 2014, the Kepler award for “new materials in energy technology” by the European Academy of Science in 2012, and the Young Scientist Award by the Solid State Ionic Society.

Jurgen Michel leads research projects in silicon-based photonic materials and devices as well as advanced solar cell designs. His main focus is currently on on-chip WDM devices, Ge-based high performance detectors and modulators, and Ge-based lasers with the goal to implement active photonics devices in CMOS based chips.

Prior to joining MIT in 1991 he was Postdoctoral Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, studying defect reactions and defect properties in semiconductor materials. He was educated in Germany and earned his diploma in Physics at the University of Cologne and his doctorate and habilitation in Applied Physics at the University of Paderborn. He has published more than 200 refereed scientific papers, 4 book chapters, 19 awarded patents, and more than 20 pending patents.

Polina Anikeeva received her BS in Physics from St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, and a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT. She completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford, where she created devices for optical stimulation and recording from brain circuits. Polina joined the MIT faculty in 2011 and is currently a Matoula S. Salapatas Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and a Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. She serves as the director of the K. Lisa Yang Brain-Body Center. Anikeeva’s Bioelectronics research group focuses on the development of minimal approaches to record and modulate the physiology of the nervous system, especially in the context of brain-body communication. Anikeeva is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the DARPA Young Faculty Award, the TR35, the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, and the NIH Pioneer Award.