Innovation in a Time of Change
Symposium Recordings:
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We are entering a period of rapid technological, economic, and societal transformation, driven by two interrelated forces—each bringing both promise and risk.
The rise of AI and a new relationship with knowledge is unlocking powerful tools for creativity, productivity, and human well-being—capabilities long imagined and now arriving with unprecedented speed. At the same time, we face mounting global and domestic challenges, including geopolitical tensions, disrupted supply chains, demographic shifts, and the accelerating impacts of climate change.
The convergence of these forces will shape every dimension of our society, from national security and economic competitiveness to personal creativity and workforce skills. Every industry, from education to energy, finance to media, will be affected.
How can we thrive in this evolving landscape? How do we harness these opportunities while mitigating the risks? This symposium will convene MIT faculty, industry leaders, and government stakeholders to examine the technologies driving this change and explore how individuals, organizations, and nations can respond with purpose and resilience.
Online pre-registration has been closed. Walk-in registration is available on site.
Managing Director, Public Sector, BT Group
Ed Stainton is Managing Director for the Public Sector at BT Group, where he leads BT’s engagement with central and local government, defence, healthcare, and the devolved nations across the UK. He has extensive experience overseeing secure, large-scale digital infrastructure and transformation programmes that support modern, resilient public services. He has been closely involved in many of BT’s most significant public sector bids, bringing a strong understanding of public procurement, commercial strategy, and the frameworks that underpin government contracting. Earlier in his career, Ed worked in BT Ventures, helping to shape innovative commercial models and partnerships — experience that continues to inform his approach to public sector collaboration. He contributes to cross-government work on procurement reform, digital inclusion, and social value, with a focus on delivering sustainable outcomes through strategic partnerships.
Dr. Srinivasan is a distinguished scientist who received her PhD in Microbiology from The Ohio State University in 2004, where she contributed to the discovery of the 22nd amino acid, Pyrrolysine (2002). She first came to MIT as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in Prof. Tom Rajbhandary’s lab, where her research focused on understanding protein synthesis mechanisms in Archaea.
Dr. Srinivasan subsequently moved into the business development and technology licensing space, serving in MIT’s Technology Licensing Office, where she helped commercialize technologies in medical devices and alternative energies. She then moved to UMass Medical School’s Office of Technology Management in 2009 and to Emory University in Atlanta in 2014 as the Director of Public and Private Partnerships for the Woodruff Health Sciences Center. In 2019, Dr. Srinivasan joined Emory’s Office of Corporate Relations as Executive Director, and in 2021, she led the Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations.
Chancellor, MIT Class of 1922 Professor of Political Science, MIT Department of Political Science
Melissa Nobles is Chancellor and Class of 1922 Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
As chancellor, Melissa Nobles is responsible for overseeing more than 60 interconnected offices that support undergraduate and graduate students’ academic success, foster community and wellbeing, and cultivate personal and intellectual growth. Chancellor Nobles works closely with senior leaders to develop and implement the Institute’s strategic priorities.
Throughout her distinguished career at MIT, Nobles’ leadership has resulted in the creation of a new theater building and a forthcoming music building, which will be a state-of-the-art center for music research, innovation, and performance. Nobles also championed the pioneering “MIT & Slavery” research class; secured new support for graduate students, postdocs, and professorships in SHASS; and launched several labs focused on digital humanities, music technology, election data and science, and climate action.
Nobles’ teaching includes graduate courses in transitional justice, ethnic politics, and nationalism as well as undergraduate courses in comparative politics, Latin American studies, ethnic conflict in world politics, and social movements in comparative perspective. Her international, comparative research focuses on restorative justice in light of ethnic and racial conflicts. She is the author of two books, Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford University Press, 2000) and The Politics of Official Apologies (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and is the co-editor with Jun-Hyeok Kwak of Inherited Responsibility and Historical Reconciliation in East Asia (Routledge Press, 2013). Her work has also appeared in the Annual Review of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Social Research, Daedalus, American Journal of Public Health, and several edited books.
Her current research is focused on examining racial murders in the American South, 1930–1954. Working closely as a faculty collaborator and advisory board member of Northeastern University Law School's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice law clinic, Nobles has conducted extensive archival research, unearthing understudied and previously unknown racial murders, and contributing to several legal investigations. In fall 2022, the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive was publicly released for scholarly and public use. She contributes to the US national dialogue about racial equity through thoughtful research-based commentaries that draw on her scholarship in the field.
Nobles graduated from Brown University with a degree in history and received her MA and PhD in political science from Yale University. She has held fellowships at Boston University's Institute for Race and Social Division and Harvard University's Radcliffe Center for Advanced Study. She has served on the editorial boards of Polity, American Political Science Review, and Perspectives on Politics as well as a guest editor for a special issue of Nature. Nobles has also been involved in faculty governance at MIT and beyond, serving as associate chair of the MIT faculty from 2007 to 2009 and vice president of the American Political Science Association.
Senior Lecturer, Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management, MIT Sloan School of Management
Phil Budden is a Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan, where he focuses on innovation ecosystems and corporate innovation strategy. He co-leads MIT’s Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (REAP), helping global companies and regions connect with startups, research, and policy to accelerate growth. With a background as a British diplomat and former UK Consul General in New England, Phil brings both international perspective and practical experience in forging partnerships across industry, government, and academia—expertise especially relevant to the rapidly evolving automotive and mobility sectors.
Co-Managing Partner, Soho Square Capital
Walid Fakhry is a recognised leader in private equity and the co-Founder and is co-Managing Partner of Soho Square Capital, an investment firm focused on financing established and growing UK and European SMEs.
Prior to Soho Square, he co-founded the private equity firm Core Capital in 2004, having worked previously in strategy consulting, operations and investment banking. Walid also founded and sold one of the largest internet service providers in the Middle East.
He has a BSc in Mechanical Engineering, a BSc in Finance and an Msc in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Group Head of Innovation and Research, The Weir Group PLC
Alan Stewart is the Group Head of Innovation and Research at The Weir Group, based in Glasgow.
In his current role, Alan leads a cross-functional team that supports the development, acceleration, and adoption of new and novel technologies to support the wider company's strategy of making mining more sustainable.
In his current role, Alan leads cross-functional teams exploring emerging technologies, developing and delivering an external research portfolio, and fostering a culture of customer value creation. His work spans horizon scanning, technology assessment, applied research, and the integration of technology into new products and processes, helping the organization meet the market demands and a changing landscape.
More recently, Alan and team have focused on the external innovation ecosystem and how best to engage, drive collaboration, innovation, and value from this previously untapped resource.
He regularly engages with external partners, academic institutions, and industry networks to stay at the forefront of innovation thinking and ensure the organization remains relevant and future-ready.
Managing Director, M-SParc (Parc Gwyddoniaeth Menai Science Park)
Innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems are essential to building the capabilities and competitiveness needed for the future. MIT’s Regional Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program (REAP) has developed a five-stakeholder model (entrepreneurs, government, academia, industry, and risk capital) to help strengthen regional and national ecosystems worldwide. This panel will bring together representatives from these stakeholder groups to discuss the current landscape, as well as the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Charles Stark Draper Career Development Professor, MIT AeroAstro
Professor Masha Folk is the Charles Stark Draper Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. She leads research in gas turbine aerodynamics and sustainable propulsion at the Gas Turbine Laboratory and the Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment. Her work combines fundamental fluid dynamics with practical solutions that can accelerate the decarbonization of aviation.
Before joining MIT, she spent 14 years at Rolls-Royce as an aerothermal specialist, tackling industry challenges across the design, development, and operation of gas turbine engines, including efforts with sustainable fuels. She holds a Ph.D. in Energy, Fluids, and Turbomachinery from the University of Cambridge (2020), an M.Res. from Cambridge (2015), an M.S. from Purdue University (2014), and a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from The Ohio State University (2010). Her doctoral work on combustor–turbine interaction was recognized with the 2019 ASME Gas Turbine Award for the most outstanding contribution in the field.
At MIT, Professor Folk also teaches thermodynamics and propulsion, where she integrates theory with practice to train future engineers to advance sustainable power and propulsion, ensuring the field continues to meet urgent decarbonization goals.
Sustainability Director, BT Group
Sarwar has 12 years’ experience in developing decarbonisation strategies, products and propositions spanning across the telecoms, IT, and energy industries, working for both large corporates and start-ups. He has a master’s degree in Renewable Energy Technology, is IEMA Carbon Management certified, and holds an Executive MBA from Cranfield University. In his spare time, Sarwar is also a BT Digital Boost mentor, providing small businesses with the extra support they need to scale.
Many of the key challenges we face today are complex and multidimensional. Climate change and sustainability are prime examples. Addressing such challenges will require a radical rethinking of our foundational infrastructures, including how we engineer, measure, and operate them, as well as how we understand the value they create and the values that guide their evolution. This session will explore two such areas: sustainable aviation and digital platforms. It will examine recent developments in how they are engineered and consider their emerging roles within the broader system.
Managing Director, MIT-UK and MIT-Netherlands at MIT
Every year, over a thousand of MIT students travel abroad to teach, to learn, to help launch startups, or to work with industry partners on projects at the frontiers of science, technology, and innovation. This short session will introduce MIT’s MISTI program and opportunities for attendees to build lasting partnerships with MIT students.
Program Director, MIT Industrial Liaison Program
Steve Whittaker has almost 40 years’ of experience in R&D, innovation, and strategy. He has a background in computer science and AI, coupled with very broad interests in emerging technologies and their impact on individuals, organizations, and society.
Before joining MIT, Steve was responsible for BT's partnerships with US research universities and business schools. He was recently awarded the inaugural MIT CSAIL Connector Award for industry partnerships, and he was a resident visiting scientist/research affiliate at the MIT Media Lab for more than a decade.
Prior to relocating to the US, Steve held various research, research management, strategy and business development roles at BT's Adastral Park research labs.
Michael Schrage is a research fellow with the MIT Sloan School of Management's Initiative on the Digital Economy. His research, writing, and advisory work focuses on the behavioral economics of models, prototypes, and metrics as strategic resources for managing innovation risk and opportunity. He is author of the award-winning book The Innovator’s Hypothesis (MIT Press, 2014), Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become? (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012), and Serious Play (Harvard Business Review Press, 2000). His latest book, Recommendation Engines, was published in September 2020 by MIT Press as part of its Essential Knowledge series. He's done consulting and advisory work for Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, British Telecom, BP, Siemens, Embraer, Google, iRise, the Office of Net Assessment, and other organizations
Schrage has run design workshops and executive education programs on innovation, experimentation, and strategic measurement for organizations all over the world and is currently pioneering work in selvesware technologies designed to augment aspects, attributes, and talents of productive individuals. He is particularly interested in the future co-evolution of expertise, advice, and human agency as technologies become smarter than the people using them.
Head of AI & Data Science Research, BT Group Visiting Professor, Bournemouth University
Senior Research Fellow, University College London Former Director of AI and Data Science, Digital Catapult
Dr Robert Smith is a technologist, complexity scientist, entrepreneur, writer and sought-after public speaker. He is an artificial intelligence (A.I.) expert and has worked with clients, companies, and institutions across the private and public sectors. Having grown up in Alabama at the height of the Civil Rights movement, he has a deeply informed perspective on bias in algorithmic systems and is dedicated to the pursuit of human-readable and responsible A.I. He is the author of Rage Inside the Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms and How to Stop The Internet Making Bigots of Us All. He serves as a science, technology, and business advisor to a number of firms. He served as Director of AI and Data Science at Digital Catapult, the UK’s leading advanced digital technology innovation centre. He is a Founding Trustee of We and AI, an organization dedicated to improving AI’s effects on society. He is a Senior Fellow of the Computer Science Faculty at University College London where he co-founded the Centre for Decision-Making Uncertainty. He was the co-founder and CTO of a startup, and co-creator/coder of its product, which is now in production use at global blue-chip organizations.
The rapid emergence of new AI capabilities is creating both opportunities and challenges. One of the most intriguing questions is how we will use AI as a partner—not only in business operations, but also in how we explore and apply knowledge, experiment, understand, and create. How will we think and act differently in the future? What will our new relationship with knowledge look like? What risks and opportunities will it bring? And what have we learned so far, and what must we still strive to understand?
Associate Dean For Innovation Co-Director MIT Innovation Initiative William Porter (1967) Professor of Entrepreneurship Faculty Director Legatum Center MIT Sloan School of Management
Professor Dame Fiona Murray is the Associate Dean of Innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management, William Porter (1967) Professor of Entrepreneurship. She is the Co-Director of MIT’s Initiative for Innovation and also an associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
She is an international expert on the transformation of investments in scientific and technical innovation into innovation-based entrepreneurship that drives jobs, wealth creation, and regional prosperity. She has a special interest in entrepreneurship, the commercialization of science and the economics of entrepreneurship and innovation. She has done extensive work with entrepreneurs, governments, large corporations and philanthropists designing and evaluating the policies and programs that shape vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems: prizes competitions, accelerators, patent licensing rules and proof of concept funding programs.
A former scientist trained at Harvard University and the University of Oxford, Murray has taught and published extensively on fostering cultures that bridge scientific innovation and entrepreneurship, building effective entrepreneurial strategies for science-based businesses (in biotech and biomedical companies and recently, clean energy), and evaluating the commercial potential of novel scientific ideas. Closely tied to real world problems, Fiona works with public policy makers and entrepreneurs designing and evaluating the policies and programs that shape vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems: prizes competitions, accelerators, patent licensing rules and proof of concept funding programs. She also works with large global corporations who seek to leverage the ideas of a wide range of internal scientists as well as external entrepreneurs through novel programs such as prize competitions. Her recent engagements have focused on relationships that span the public and private sectors. She is particularly interested in new emerging organizational arrangements for the effective commercialization of science, including public-private partnerships, not-for-profits, venture philanthropy, and university-initiated seed funding and innovation-focused competitions and prizes.
After a short time on the faculty of Oxford University’s Said Business School, Murray joined MIT Sloan where she is now Faculty Director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. In this role, Fiona works on the design and delivery of entrepreneurship education at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She teaches the “Innovation Teams” course, which assembles teams of students from across MIT to learn the process of technology commercialization, with a focus on evaluating a technology’s potential for significant commercial and social impact. She has recently started the REAL course – Regional Entrepreneurial Acceleration Lab - which gives students practical and academic insights into the design and development of entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world. These courses encourage cross-campus collaborations that move scientific discoveries closer towards marketable products and allow for students from different stakeholder perspectives to understand the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem. She also has a particular interest in the entrepreneurial education of scientists and engineers, and in the role of women in entrepreneurship and commercialization of science.
Fiona has spoken at events worldwide about building entrepreneurial capacity built upon the engine of scientific research. She also speaks in academic and policy settings on innovation and intellectual property in the scientific community. She has been published in a wide range of journals, including Science, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, American Journal of Sociology, Research Policy, Organization Science, and the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.
Murray has served on the faculty at MIT Sloan since 1999. In 2006 she was promoted to Associate Professor in the Technological Innovation & Entrepreneurship Strategic Management Group and in 2009 became Faculty Director of the Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. Previously, Murray held positions at Harvard University, the University of Oxford, the Asian Development Bank, and United Nations Environment Program in Kenya.
Murray received her BA ’89 and MA ‘90 from the University of Oxford in Chemistry. She subsequently moved to the United States and earned an AM ’92 and PhD ’96 from Harvard University in Applied Sciences. She serves on the Prime Minister’s Council on Science and Technology in the United Kingdom.
Programme Director, Digital Society Programme, Chatham House
Alex leads the Digital Society Programme. His work focused on AI, emerging technology, and centres of tech power. He leads work aimed at strengthening state capacity and cooperation, identifying feasible paths towards global technology governance, and on routes to market for public technology.
He was, until 2022, research director at Demos, director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, and co-founder of the AI start-up CASM Technology. He led the Good Web Project and is a fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).
Increasing global and political tensions are reshaping how we think about cooperation and competition. Nowhere is this more evident than in technology, where access to and control of key capabilities, such as quantum computing, advanced semiconductor manufacturing, space systems, and synthetic biology, are increasingly viewed as both competitive and national security priorities. At the same time, the social and economic questions surrounding technologies like AI are becoming more complex, making both domestic and international coordination ever more challenging.
How can we balance these concerns in ways that acknowledge national, regional, and global perspectives, while also accounting for competition? This session will examine two key domains: Tough Tech and Digital.