Fostering Bold Ideas to Breakthrough Innovation
Education Partner
To benefit from this discounted rate, guests are encouraged to make their reservations using the provided reservation link by no later than October 18, 2024.
MIT is empowered by its diverse research and development ecosystem to invent fundamental technologies and cultivate interdisciplinary collaborations. In this year’s annual flagship conference, we will showcase MIT's latest research and development in critical technology areas, including AI, mobility, life science, space tech, microelectronics, and quantum computing. Along with the latest technology breakthrough, we will offer invaluable insights and perspectives on creating coherent innovation strategies in implementing the technologies and achieving meaningful impact. We will especially feature the latest research at MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) this year in celebration of innovation and discovery at the 40th-anniversary of the MIT MTL.
Attendees will have the opportunity to hear from MIT's renowned researchers and faculty, MIT-connected startups from the MIT Startup Exchange, as well as global corporate representatives and speakers.
Join MIT’s global community at the Research and Development Conference on November 19-20, 2024, where MIT’s innovation meets industry revolution.
Day One Concurrent Tracks: Track 1 | Space Track 2 | Mobility Track 3 | Innovations
Day Two Concurrent Tracks: Track 4 | Healthcare Track 5 | Artificial Intelligence Track 6 | Quantum 2.0
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.
Program Director, MIT Corporate Relations
Dr. Najung “Natalie” Kim is a Program Director at the MIT Industrial Liaison Program. She brings to the Office of Corporate Relations (OCR) expertise in strategic collaboration in life sciences and biotech industries, including cell and gene therapy and AI/ML analytics. Kim comes to OCR from Adjuvant Partners where she has been serving as Senior Consultant, Strategic Partnering, working to connect industry, startups, and academic leaders in the cell and gene therapy sector. Before Adjuvant, Natalie worked at Ajinomoto, where she was Manager of the Research & Innovation Center, facilitating collaborations on preclinical and clinical development of biologics, diagnostics, and cell therapy ancillary products in Asia, Europe, and North America. Prior to Ajinomoto, Kim was a business development manager at Medipost, where she led strategic partnerships in mesenchymal stem cell therapeutics in orthopedic and neurodegenerative applications. Kim also went through her postdoctoral training at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine as a Department of Defense Research Fellow working on translational gene therapy in tissue engineering programs.
Kim earned her B.S. Bioscience and Food Engineering at Handong Global University, her M.S. Medicine at Seoul National University in South Korea, and her Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering at the University of Iowa.
MIT Vice President for Research Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Ian A. Waitz is the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and vice president for research at MIT. Vice President Waitz is the Institute’s senior research officer and has overall responsibility for research administration and policy at the Institute. He sets MIT’s strategic research direction, fosters an outstanding research environment for faculty, students, and staff, and enables major multidisciplinary research initiatives. The vice president for research is responsible for research integrity and compliance and plays a central role in the Institute’s research relationships with the federal government, industry, and other sponsors. Vice President Waitz oversees MIT Lincoln Laboratory and more than a dozen interdisciplinary research laboratories and centers.
Waitz has been on the faculty at MIT since 1991. He has served as head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, as dean of the School of Engineering, and most recently, from 2017 to 2024, as MIT’s vice chancellor for undergraduate and graduate education. While leading the Office of the Vice Chancellor, Waitz re-envisioned the first-year undergraduate academic experience, expanded undergraduate advising and financial aid, and increased support and professional development opportunities for graduate students. He also led MIT’s response to graduate student unionization. As dean of the School of Engineering from 2011 to 2017, Waitz enhanced the school’s ability to attract and support exceptional students and faculty, launched the MIT-wide Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, fostered innovation and entrepreneurship among students and faculty, and advanced programs for residential and online learning.
Waitz’s early research led to advances in gas turbine engines, fluid mechanics, combustion, and acoustics. However, his most significant contributions have related to the modeling and evaluation of climate, air quality, and noise impacts of aviation, along with the assessment of technological, operational, and policy options for mitigating these impacts. These efforts have led to more rigorous evaluations of environmental policy and technology. His current research aims to reduce the climate impacts of aviation.
Waitz received his BS in 1986 from the Pennsylvania State University, his MS in 1988 from the George Washington University, and his PhD in 1991 from the California Institute of Technology. He has engaged widely with US and international government and industry throughout his career. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and has been recognized by multiple awards for teaching and research, including MIT’s MacVicar Fellowship.
Throughout the Institute’s history, industrial leaders have turned to MIT’s research enterprise for special expertise. Because excellence, collaboration, and practical impact are in our DNA, here at MIT you can pose the most complex problems and the most urgent challenges, access the most talented workforce, and join in creating the future. Ian Waitz, VP for Research, will share his thoughts on why corporate engagement with academia builds a stronger ecosystem for innovation, what makes MIT the place to be, and how you can make the most of your engagements on campus.
Dean, MIT School of Engineering MIT Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer Vannevar Bush Professor, MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Anantha P. Chandrakasan is dean of the MIT School of Engineering, MIT’s Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer, and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He serves as chair of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium and the MIT AI Hardware Program, and co-chair of the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab, the MIT-Takeda Program, and the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology.
He earned his bachelor’s (1989), master’s (1990), and doctoral (1994) degrees in electrical engineering and computer sciences from the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the MIT faculty in 1994 and was the director of the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories from 2006 to 2011. From July 2011 through June 2017, he served as head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), a position that concluded with his appointment as dean in July 2017.
As dean of engineering since 2017, Chandrakasan has implemented various interdisciplinary programs, creating new models for how academia and industry can work together to accelerate the pace of research. This has resulted in the launch of initiatives including the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, the MIT-Takeda Program, the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative, the MIT Mobility Initiative, the MIT Quest for Intelligence, the MIT AI Hardware Program, the MIT-Northpond Program, the MIT Faculty Founder Initiative, and the MIT-Novo Nordisk Artificial Intelligence Postdoctoral Fellows Program.
Chandrakasan has also played a role in establishing initiatives beyond the School of Engineering. He was instrumental in founding the Schwarzman College of Computing in 2018, marking the most significant structural change to MIT in nearly 70 years. He has served in leadership roles on MIT Fast Forward, an Institute-wide plan for addressing climate change; as the inaugural chair of the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health; as the co-chair of the academic workstream for MIT’s Task Force 2021; and played an important role in the early committee for the creation of MIT.nano.
One of his top priorities as dean has been fostering a sense of community within MIT’s largest school. He has launched several programs to give students and staff a more active role in shaping the initiatives and operations of the school, including the Staff Advice & Implementation Committee, the undergraduate Student Advisory Group, the Graduate Student Advisory Group (GradSAGE), the Faculty Gender Equity Committee, and the MIT School of Engineering Postdoctoral Fellowship Program for Engineering Excellence. Working closely with GradSAGE, Chandrakasan has also played a role in establishing the Daniel J. Riccio Graduate Engineering Leadership Program.
As MIT’s inaugural Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer, Chandrakasan collaborates with key stakeholders across MIT, as well as external partners, to launch initiatives and new collaborations in support of the Institute’s strategic priorities. In this new role, he will help develop and implement plans to advance research, education, and innovation in areas that President Kornbluth has identified as her top priorities — such as climate change and sustainability, artificial intelligence, and the life sciences.
Before becoming dean in 2017, Chandrakasan served for six years as head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), MIT’s largest academic department. As department head, Chandrakasan spearheaded initiatives that enabled students, postdocs, and faculty to conduct research, explore entrepreneurial projects, and engage with EECS. For students, one of these initiatives included the Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, known as “SuperUROP,” a year-long independent research program launched in 2012 and expanded to the whole School of Engineering in 2015. He also created Start6, which expanded to StartMIT, an independent activities period (IAP) class that provides students and postdocs the opportunity to learn from and interact with industrial innovation leaders. Finally, he created Rising Stars in EECS, an academic career workshop that rotates amongst various universities and has become a model for similar efforts in other disciplines.
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). He was also recognized as the author with the highest number of publications in the 60-year history of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).
Chandrakasan is the recipient of the 2019 Solid-State Circuit Society’s Distinguished Service Award, the 2013 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits, the 2009 Semiconductor Industry Association University Researcher Award, an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven in 2016, and the 2017 UC Berkeley EE Distinguished Alumni Award. He is also the recipient of the 2022 IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal.
A fellow of the IEEE, in 2015 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, in 2019 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and in 2020 he was elected as fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Chandrakasan currently serves on the SMART Governing Board. He previously served on the Board of The Engine from 2016-2021, the Board of Trustees of the Perkins School for the Blind from 2018-2022, and the Board of Analog Devices Inc. from 2019-2024.
As MIT’s inaugural Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer, Dean Anantha Chandrakasan will outline his vision for advancing MIT’s innovation ecosystem to address the world’s most pressing challenges. Drawing on MIT’s strengths in research, interdisciplinary collaboration, and industry partnerships, he will highlight some recent and near-term successes, along with current initiatives that seek to expand the institute’s impact. In alignment with President Kornbluth’s priorities, Dean Chandrakasan will share how MIT can catalyze breakthroughs in areas like climate, life sciences and healthcare, GenAI, and manufacturing through bold thinking and strategic partnerships. He will also emphasize the critical role industry leaders can play in this process, inviting deeper engagement to co-create solutions that harness talent and research to drive transformative change. Attendees will gain insights into how they can actively collaborate with MIT to shape a better, more innovative future.
Managing Director, Centre for Cognitive Advanced Technologies, Fujitsu
Keith is Managing Director of Fujitsu's Centre for Cognitive and Advanced Technologies. Formerly a Royal Air Force Intelligence Officer and Expert Advisor to the Prime Minister, he holds a Doctorate in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oxford, an Exec-MBA from the University of Cambridge, and an MA from King’s College London.
Director, MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) Professor, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)
Tomás Palacios is the Director of Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) and is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California - Santa Barbara in 2006 and his undergraduate degree in Telecommunication Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain). Being a fellow of IEEE his current research focuses on demonstrating new electronic devices and applications for novel semiconductor materials such as graphene and gallium nitride. Tomás is passionate about making an impact on modern society in Energy, Engineering, Nanoscale, Physics, Semiconductors, Nanotechnology, and Climate Change. His work has been recognized with multiple awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the 2012 and 2019 IEEE George Smith Awards, and the NSF, ONR, and DARPA Young Faculty Awards, among many others. Prof. Palacios is the founder and director of the MIT MTL Center for Graphene Devices and 2D Systems, as well as the Chief Advisor and co-founder of Finwave Semiconductor, Inc. From 2023, Tomas serves as Associate Director of the SUPeRior Energy-efficient Materials and Devices (SUPREME) center, one of the seven 2023 JUMP 2.0 programs sponsored by Semiconductor Research Corporation.
Renee J. Robins is the Executive Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab at MIT. Renee works closely with faculty director John Lienhard to develop and manage the lab’s activities, priorities, and strategy, including new funding opportunities and international collaborations.
Since 1998, Renee has worked on the conception, launch, and development of a number of large interdisciplinary, international, and partnership-based research and education collaborations at MIT and elsewhere. MIT programs she has worked on since she joined the staff in 1998 include the Cambridge MIT Institute (Associate Director for Graduate Programs), the MIT Portugal Program (Director for Program Integration), the Mexico City Program (Program Coordinator), and the Program on Emerging Technologies (Program Manager). From 2000-2011, she also served as Director of Special Projects for the Technology and Policy Program, where she was responsible for the development of a number of academic initiatives and major events. Before joining J-WAFS as executive director, she managed a $15M research program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education as it scaled from implementation in one public school district to 59 schools in seven districts across North Carolina.
Outside of MIT, Renee’s experience includes serving on the Board of Trustees for the International Honors Program (IHP) – a comparative multi-site study abroad program – and independent consulting work for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and program design and strategy consulting for Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique (UM6P), a new university in Morocco. For IHP, she conceived, initiated, and developed the “Cities in the 21st Century” program, which began in 1998 and is one of IHP’s most popular offerings with over 1000 alumni. She is herself an alumna of IHP, having studied comparative culture and anthropology in seven countries around the world, and also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Renee’s holds two undergraduate degrees from MIT (biology and humanities/anthropology), and a masters degree in public policy from Carnegie Mellon University.
Chu Huang is the Program Director at the MIT site for Breakthrough Tech AI. Chu is a program innovator with an entrepreneurial spirit. She has spearheaded programs across non-profit organizations, higher education, and local government administration efforts. One of her programs have received honorable recognition from President Obama’s White House Initiative of Asian American Pacific Islanders as Champions of Change. Chu is passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion and works towards creating programs that have a positive impact for uplifting young people.
Irina Gaziyeva comes to Corporate Relations from the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT where she worked 10 years as Administrative Assistant where she has supported four senior faculty members and their research groups (20-25 graduate students). Since 2018, Irina has acted as program coordinator, teaming-up with the program manager and program faculty lead for the MechE Alliance program. She has facilitated 45+ virtual seminars, workshops, and mentoring events in this informal role. Irina has also actively connected members of the MechE community to support student career development, mentorship, and networking opportunities with MIT alumni and industry. Before MIT, Irina held positions as Administrative Assistant and Member Representative at Brookline Dental and Tufts Health plan, respectively. Irina has also been a Community Organizer in Worcester, MA.
Irina earned her B.A., Management (with Innovation & Entrepreneurship track) at Clark University in Worcester, and her M.S., Program and Project Management from Brandeis University in Waltham. She has received many awards at MIT for outstanding service, and she has extensive community volunteer work to her credit.
Co-Founder & CEO, Concerto Biosciences
A leader of scientific innovation and a winner of the Emerging Women Founder Award, Cheri co-founded Concerto to reinvent humanity’s relationship with microbes. Cheri led Concerto to raise oversubscribed Seed and Series A investment rounds, fueling the company’s development of transformative microbial treatments and industry partnerships. Cheri has built a strong company culture centered around rigorous science, intent listening, and compassion. She holds a PhD in Chemistry from UC Berkeley (Hertz Fellow) and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (NIH Kirschstein Fellow).
CEO, Advanced Silicon Group
Marcie Black’s passion is in solving important problems in the world including equitable health care, energy and the environment, and energy security. She is the CEO of Advanced Silicon Group (ASG). ASG is commercializing a silicon photoelectric sensor (Light Sense) which will lower the barriers of protein sensing so that everyone has access to good health care. Before founding ASG, Marcie was the President and co-founder of Bandgap Engineering, which focused on lowering the cost of solar electricity through black silicon solar cells. Marcie also was a technical staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) working on a variety of nanotechnology and optical systems. She began at LANL as a prestigious Director’s Funded Post Doc, developing organic and nano solar cells. Marcie has a Ph.D. from MIT in Electrical Engineering, under the supervision of Institute Professor, Mildred Dresselhaus. Prior to her Ph.D. work, Marcie was a device engineer at Motorola. In 2009, she was awarded an R&D 100 award for her contributions to work at LANL. Marcie also was honored as one of the ten “Women-to-Watch in 2010” by Mass High Tech. Marcie has over 30+ papers and more than 20 issued patents with many more pending.
Co-Founder, 2Pi
Tian Gu is a Principal Investigator and Research Scientist at MIT. His primary research interests involve nano-/micro-optics, integrated photonics, and photonic materials, focusing on the areas of metasurface flat optics, optical phase change materials, photonic interconnection/packaging, on-chip spectroscopy, artificial intelligence, photovoltaics, flexible photonics, etc. He is the co-Founder of 2Pi and LyteChip, MIT spin-off companies developing advanced optics and photonics technologies. He received his B.S. degree from Beijing Institute of Technology in Electrical Engineering, and Ph.D. degree from University of Delaware in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Tian publishes in journals including Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Photonics, Nature Communications, Nano Letters, Optica, Advanced Optical Materials, etc. He is a recipient of the SPIE Rising Researcher Award, R&D 100 Award, TechConnect National Innovation Award, among others. He has been named a Top Scholar by ScholarGPS, ranking in the top 0.5% of all scholars worldwide. His work has been recognized in “Optics in 2021" by OSA, “Top 10 MIT research news of 2020”, and multiple best paper awards in technical conferences. He holds 15 patents.
Tian serves on the Editorial Board of Scientific Reports. He is also an Associate Editor of Frontiers in Physics, Optics and Photonics. He is the Guest Editor of Nanophotonics special issue on "Programmable Nanophotonics" (2023), Optical Materials Express feature issue on "Hybrid Integrated Photonic Platforms" (2021) and Journal of Lightwave Technology special issue on "Optical Interconnects" (2020).
Tian has served on conference program committees for CLEO, IEEE Photonics Conference, IEEE Summer Topicals Meeting on Reconfigurable Optics and Photonics, Optical Interconnects Conference, SENSORS, International Congress on Glass, International Conference on Concentrator Photovoltaic Systems, etc.
Founder & CTO, Mobi Systems
As Founder and CTO of Mobi, Peng Yu is the technological visionary behind our Human Collaborative AI Platform. In addition, he oversees Mobi’s research and development, guiding a group of PhDs in pushing the boundaries of what’s possible when applying advanced technologies to real-world problems. Peng earned his PhD from MIT working in the CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence) and MERS (Mobile-Enables Robotic Systems) labs and histhesis on using AI for decision assistance forms the backbone of Mobi’s solutions.
Founder& CEO, Wellsite Navigator
Josh Adler is a successful serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and public speaker who has founded energy, logistics, robotics, real estate, medical technology, and internet companies, and served as chief speechwriter for the U.S. Treasury Secretary. He is a graduate of Yale and MIT and the lead inventor on 19 granted U.S. patents in the fields of energy intelligence and geoscience. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Wired and The Economist. Josh is currently the Founding Chief Executive of Wellsite Navigator, an energy logistics SaaS platform based in Houston that is the most widely adopted software in the North American energy industry, with over 500,000 installations at over 2,000 companies. Adler previously founded and led Sourcenergy, which he sold to Bison Energy Services. Sourcenergy detected upstream energy and water activity and infrastructure earlier, more accurately and more completely than other sources by applying novel AI and data fusion methods to satellite, geolocation, geoscience, regulatory, and other big data. Sourcenergy earned 22 U.S. patents and was honored by CERAWeek as an Energy Innovation Pioneer, Frost & Sullivan as the Supply Chain Technology of the Year, TPH as an Energy Disruptor, the CleanTech Open with the first CTO Water Prize, ImagineH2O, SxSW Eco, NREL and others. The company appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Houston Chronicle, Bloomberg, and the Midland Reporter-Telegram. Sourcenergy’s hundreds of customers included some of the world’s leading energy companies such as ConocoPhillips, Occidental, Shell, Ovintiv, and Schlumberger.
Co-founder and CEO, qBraid
Kanav Setia is the co-founder and CEO of qBraid. He earned a PhD in Physics from Dartmouth College in 2020, where he worked on quantum algorithms for quantum chemistry, with a particular focus on fermion-to-qubit encodings. Dr. Setia’s work on the Bravyi-Kitaev Superfast (BKSF) algorithm was the first to apply BKSF to quantum chemistry simulation. Collaborating with IBM, he developed the Generalized Superfast Encoding (GSE) for quantum simulation. This work was the first to show the presence of inherent error-correcting properties within the fermion-to-qubit encodings. During his PhD, Dr. Setia interned at IBM twice, contributing to IBM’s open-source quantum chemistry software, Qiskit-Chemistry, and Google’s OpenFermion. He was a co-author on the initial releases of both. Dr. Setia also holds a B.Tech in Aerospace Engineering with a minor in Astronomy and Planetary Sciences from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology. After graduation, he worked for four years at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in the MEMS division of the Semi-Conductor Laboratory, focusing on the design and development of accelerometers and gyroscopes.
Co-Founder and CEO, Jaxon
Scott is the Co-Founder/CEO of Jaxon, an AI platform that helps users build custom AI systems with confidence. Jaxon ensures AI is predictable for use cases where the accuracy has to be trusted.
Prior to Jaxon, Scott founded and led BigR.io, a deep learning consultancy, that he grew to acquisition. Before BigR.io, Scott was a pioneer in the wireless imaging industry, having created one of the first systems able to send images from mobile devices.
Scott holds a BS from Union College, an MBA from Northeastern University, and a Master’s from ASU with coursework performed at MIT.
Co-Founder and CEO, Delineate
Emily Nieves is Co-Founder and CEO of Delineate, an AI copilot for computational pharmacology. Delineate empowers pharma and biotech companies to make faster, evidence-driven decisions, de-risking development across all departments. Nieves is a Ph.D. Candidate in Biological Engineering at MIT where she focuses on the intersection of AI and pharmacology. She has previously worked at large pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca and Pfizer where she built models to assist in answering various questions along the drug development process. Nieves is passionate about enabling scientists to make the best evidence-based decisions possible.
CEO & Co-Founder, Lunar Station Corporation
Blair DeWitt is the CEO and Founder of Lunar Station Corporation. The company has created a lunar intelligence platform called MoonHacker™. MoonHacker™ helps organizations have the best outcomes for missions on the Moon. While earning his master’s at MIT, joined the student-led Astropreneur and Space Industry Club. He was part of the student team that created and organized the first annual MIT New Space Age Conference in 2016. Passion for innovative technologies has steered Blair to leading-edge technology organizations like IBM, NASA, TIBCO, EMC, and Psion (to highlight a few) mastering an expansive range of technologies and business use cases. Something most people don’t know about Blair is that he is an experienced horseback rider. Blair has volunteered his expertise by teaching special needs children how to ride horses and helped train the Massachusetts State Police Horses for their mounted division.
Jon Kim joined Corporate Relations in February 2022 as Program Director.
Jon comes to Corporate Relations with extensive experience in managing business and product development, and partnership with Korean and Asian companies.
Prior to MIT, Jon worked for several technology companies (Entegris, Amazon Alexa, Brooks Automation, Nuance Communications, VoiceSignal Technologies) leading product development and partnership with Korean and Asian companies in semiconductor, AI, voice assistant, mobile, robotics industry.
Before coming to US, Jon was Commercial Specialist at the US Embassy in Seoul (US Department of Commerce, Foreign Commercial Service). There he developed market entry and business strategies for US technology, energy, and automotive companies, and conducted market research and partner alliance programs. Jon also resolved many regulatory issues working with both Korean and US government agencies, for US automotive companies to increase sales in Korea significantly.
Jon earned his B.A. in Public Administration at the Yonsei University in Seoul, and his MBA at the University of Michigan.
Interim Vice Chancellor, MIT Cecil and Ida Green Education Professor, of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT AeroAstro
Hastings first joined the faculty at MIT in 1985. In 2021, Hastings was appointed co-chair of MIT’s Values Statement Committee, a charge by MIT leadership to engage the community in the foundational work of developing a statement of shared institutional values, the results of which were accepted by MIT’s academic council in 2022. Hastings was the faculty lead of the MIT School of Engineering Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, and in 2021 he was appointed associate dean focusing on advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across the School.
His research specializations include synergetic interactions between space systems and the space environment, space propulsion, space policy, space systems, spacecraft manufacturing processes, space system architecting.
An Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), in 2002, Hastings was awarded the Losey Atmospheric Sciences Award from the AIAA. He is a fellow (academician) of the International Astronautical Federation and the International Council in System Engineering.. He was also the recipient of MIT’s Gordon Billard Award for “special service of outstanding merit performed for the Institute” in 2013.
The space enterprise is changing dramatically. Entrepreneurial space has increased dramatically, as has international space activity. The talk will review the critical space policy issues based on a recent class in this area. Next, it will outline the issues in space technology and architecture from the perspective of the AIAA and then turn to what research work in space is going on in the MIT AeroAstro Department. The talk will finish with some of the demographic challenges for the space enterprise.
Apollo Program Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT AersoAstro
Olivier de Weck is the Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he is the director of the Engineering Systems Laboratory as well as the Associate Department Head of Aero Astro. His research is in Systems Engineering with a focus on how complex technological systems are designed and how they evolve over time. He is a Fellow of INCOSE and a Fellow of AIAA and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. His textbook “Technology Roadmapping and Development” received the Most Promising Textbook of 2024 award by TAA.
Reaching Earth's orbit is an extremely energetic event. To remain in orbit requires a velocity of about 8 km/s, which corresponds to a specific energy of 30 MJ per kilogram. Since 1957 humans have been able to launch themselves as well as artificial satellites into orbit at increasing frequencies. This talk will give an update on the current state of launch vehicle technologies and this important and enabling part of the space sector. In 2023, for example, there were 222 launch attempts worldwide, of which 95% were successful. Assuming a CAGR of 12%, we predict that by 2027, there will be daily launches to space from somewhere on Earth's surface. This talk will summarize some of the physics, technologies, and economics of the launch vehicle industry.
Rockwell International Career Development Professor Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT AeroAstro
Richard Linares joined the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics as an assistant professor last July. Before joining MIT, he was an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota’s aerospace engineering and mechanics department. Linares received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in aerospace engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He was a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory and also held a postdoc appointment at the United States Naval Observatory. His research areas are astrodynamics, estimation and controls, satellite guidance and navigation, space situational awareness, and space-traffic management.
MIT ARCLab focuses on space traffic management, space situational awareness, and space sustainability. This talk will analyze space security issues related to space management and orbital debris. It will also cover topics in space awareness, including behavior estimation, behavior characterization, and learning. Furthermore, the talk will discuss the Department of the Air Force's AI Accelerator, which has a focused project dedicated to space awareness and the development of AI techniques to address space security issues.
Brett McGuire is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He joined the MIT faculty in 2020 and currently holds the position of Class of 1943 Career Development Assistant Professor.
McGuire's research focuses on astrochemistry, combining physical chemistry, molecular spectroscopy, and observational astrophysics to study the chemical evolution of molecules in space. His work aims to understand how the chemical ingredients for life develop during star and planet formation.
Academically, McGuire earned his B.S. in Chemistry with Highest Distinction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, followed by an M.S. in Physical Chemistry from Emory University, and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Before joining MIT, McGuire held several prestigious positions, including NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow and NRAO Jansky Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. He also maintains an appointment as an Adjunct Assistant Astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
McGuire's research has garnered significant recognition. He was named one of Chemical & Engineering News' Talented 12 in 2020 and received the AAS Laboratory Astrophysics Division Early Career Award in 2019. In 2022, he was awarded the Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy from the American Astronomical Society.
At MIT, McGuire leads a research group that uses cutting-edge techniques in laboratory spectroscopy, radio astronomy observations, and machine learning to detect new molecules in interstellar space. His work particularly focuses on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and their role in interstellar chemistry and star formation.
Beyond his research, McGuire is dedicated to teaching and mentoring. He has taught several courses at MIT, including Principles of Chemical Science and Thermodynamics II and Kinetics. He also hosts a monthly podcast called "Astrochem Coffee," where he discusses various aspects of astrochemistry research.
Identifying the precise chemical makeup of complex mixtures is of interest in fields ranging from atmospheric chemistry to pharmaceutical development and quality control to my own field of astrochemistry. A variety of analytical tools such as spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance, and chromatography provide chemical "fingerprinting," which can, in theory, be used to identify these chemical components, but the sheer density of spectral features of different molecules that are often present in such readings can make unambiguous assignment to individual species challenging. Yet, the components are commonly chemically related due to the shared chemical evolution of the mixture. Therefore, along with investigating the analytical signals, analysis of the structural and chemical relevance of a molecule is an important consideration when determining which species are present in a given mixture. My group works primarily in applications of rotational spectroscopy, and thus, in this talk, I will present a method that combines machine-learning molecular embedding models with a graph-based ranking system to determine the likelihood of a molecule being present in a pure rotational spectrum based on the other known species, chemical priors, and spectroscopic information. I'll present details on the process as well as demonstrate its utility on both laboratory mixtures and astrochemical observations from space. Our work demonstrates that the chemical inventory can be identified with extremely high accuracy in a much more efficient manner than manual analysis.
Mr. David Martin joined Corporate Relations on August 15, 2018 as Program Director for the ILP. Martin comes to OCR with deep and broad knowledge and expertise in program management, innovation, commercial and government contracting, and strategic planning. In his most recent position at Altran (Burlington, MA) as the VP Programs, Dave had many major accomplishments including leading an innovation team to develop new technology in the beverage-filling industry, and managing client-facing relations supporting sales and execution of projects. Before that, he was at Windmill International as VP, Product Development, R&D. There he spearheaded the move into new markets for an innovative satellite communications product including through the SBIR program where he secured funding and sponsorship. Martin also leveraged other government programs collaborating with the DoD and congressional contacts. He began his career in the US Air Force as an Active Duty Captain and served for 10 years as an Acquisition Manager, Scientist, Test Director, and finally as Executive Officer in the Executive Office for Command, Control and Communications Systems in the Pentagon. Martin also served in the US Air Force Reserves before joining Windmill. Mr. Martin earned his B.S., Physics from MIT, and his M.S., Systems Management from the University of Denver. He also earned a Certificate in Information Systems at the University of Denver.
John Moavenzadeh is an expert and thought leader on the Future of Mobility. John is Executive Director of the MIT Mobility Initiative, a research, education, entrepreneurship and civic engagement program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he developed and co-teaches the graduate-level Mobility Ventures course. John is also Senior Advisor to Deloitte’s Future of Mobility practice and Operator Advisor LP at Assembly Ventures. John serves as an independent advisor to several companies that promise to transform transportation.
As Head of Mobility and Member of the Executive Committee of the World Economic Forum for over 15 years in Geneva and New York, John led a team that developed a portfolio of public-private initiatives, including autonomous vehicles and urban mobility, security of the international travel system, drones and the future of the air space, and advancing seamless integrated mobility. John has also served as Executive Director of the MIT International Motor Vehicle Program, an associate with Booz Allen Hamilton’s international transportation practice, and started his career as a product design engineer with Ford Motor Company in 1990.
John holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, an MS in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan, and an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School. He has completed executive management programs at China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), INSEAD and the Wharton School.
Jinhua Zhao is the Professor of Cities and Transportation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prof. Zhao integrates behavioral and computational thinking to decarbonize the world’s mobility system.
Prof. Zhao founded the MIT Mobility Initiative, coalescing the Institute’s efforts on transportation research, education, entrepreneurship, and engagement. He hosts the MIT Mobility Forum, highlighting transportation innovation from MIT and across the globe.
Prof. Zhao directs the JTL Urban Mobility Lab and Transit Lab, leading long-term collaborations with transportation authorities and operators worldwide and enabling cross-culture learning between cities in North America, Asia, and Europe.
Prof. Zhao leads the program “Mens, Manus, and Machina (M3S): How AI Impacts the Future of Work and Future of Learning” at the Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART).
He is the co-founder and chief scientist for TRAM.Global, a mobility decarbonization venture.
Research Interest
He brings behavioral science and transportation technology together to shape travel behavior, design mobility systems, and reform urban policies. He develops computational methods to sense, predict, nudge, and regulate travel behavior and designs multimodal mobility systems that integrate automated and shared mobility with public transport. He sees transportation as a language to describe a person, characterize a city, and understand an institution and establishes the behavioral foundation for transportation systems and policies.
Each year the MIT Mobility Initiative compiles a list of ten overarching trends and tensions within the surface mobility system. The trends cover an array of geopolitical, consumer-oriented, industrial, entrepreneurial, and financial aspects of the mobility space. The list is based on milestones and key events that have taken place throughout the year and provides context on where we have come from, where we are, and where we are going.
Yasheng Huang is the International Program Professor in Chinese Economy and Business and a Professor of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Professor Huang founded and runs the China Lab and the India Lab, which aim to help entrepreneurs in those countries improve their management skills. He is an expert source on international business, political economy, and international management. In collaboration with other scholars, Huang is conducting research on human capital formation in China and India, entrepreneurship, and ethnic and labor-intensive foreign direct investment (FDI). Prior to MIT Sloan, he held faculty positions at the University of Michigan and at Harvard Business School. Huang also served as a consultant to the World Bank.
His research has been profiled in many publications, including TheWall Street Journal,The Economist, Businessworld, Le Monde, the Economic Times, as well as in numerous Chinese publications. He also has contributed to the Financial Times, The New York Times, and Foreign Policy. Huang’s published books include Inflation and Investment Controls in China (1996), FDI in China (1998), Selling China (2003), and Financial Reform in China (2005, co-edited with Tony Saich and Edward Steinfeld). His most recent book, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics (2008), is based on detailed archival and quantitative evidence spanning three decades of reforms. Huang shows that private entrepreneurship, facilitated by financial liberalization and microeconomic flexibility, played a central role in China’s economic miracle.
Huang has held or received prestigious fellowships, such as the National Fellowship at Stanford University and the Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Fellowship. He is a member of the Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, a Fellow at the Center for Chinese Economic Research and the Center for China in the World Economy at Tsinghua University, a Fellow at the William Davidson Institute at Michigan Business School, and a World Economic Forum Fellow.
Huang holds a B.A. in government from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University. He was appointed a full professor on July 1, 2009.
Co-Director, MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering Associate Dean, MIT School of Engineering
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.
Production of lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles requires a secure supply of processed materials, such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, and graphite. Where are those materials currently mined and processed, and by which companies? What are the near-term and longer-term factors that could affect the supply of those materials for various EV and EV battery producers around the world? What are the potential technology and policy solutions to secure materials supply?
Maurice F. Strong Career Development Associate Professor Associate Professor, Operations Research and Statistics, MIT Sloan School of Management
Alexandre Jacquillat is the Maurice F. Strong Career Development Associate Professor and an Associate Professor of Operations Research and Statistics at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
His research focuses on data-driven decision-making, spanning stochastic optimization, integer optimization, and machine learning. In particular, his research aims to develop scalable algorithms and decision-making tools to support more efficient, equitable, and sustainable operations in transportation and logistics—with a particular interest in air traffic management, on-demand microtransit in urban mobility, and collaborative logistics.
Alexandre is the recipient of several research awards, including the Best Paper Award from the INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics Society (2017, 2021), the George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award from INFORMS (2015), the Best Dissertation Award from the INFORMS Transportation and Logistics Society (2015), and the L.E. Rivot Medal from the French Academy of Science. He was named in the list of Leading Academic Data Leaders from the Chief Data Officer Magazine in 2021 and 2022.
Prior to joining MIT, Alexandre was an Assistant Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College. Alexandre also worked with McKinsey & Co. and Booz Allen Hamilton, advising leading companies and governmental organizations in transportation analytics. He holds a PhD in engineering systems from MIT, a Master of Science in technology and policy from MIT, and a Master of Science in applied mathematics from the École Polytechnique.
Availability and reliability of public electric vehicle charging infrastructure is an important factor for EV adoption. Professors Alex Jacquillat and Dan Freund provide an overview of their findings from an MIT Mobility Initiative research project that leverages computer vision and optimization to support public EV charging infrastructure within a dense urban context. Where can EV charging stations be feasibly located? Should fewer charging stations be offered each with more charging ports, or should more charging stations be offered each with fewer ports? Where should urban EV chargers be located? What is the ideal charging speed (power level)? This work focuses on the immediate neighborhood of Corktown in Detroit, Michigan, with support from Michigan Central.
Dr. Corey Cheng joined the Office of Corporate Relations (OCR) as an Senior Industrial Liaison Officer in December 2011. He has broad interests in science and technology, and uses his technical research experience to better serve ILP members in Asia and the United States.
Cheng spent six years in industrial research at Dolby Laboratories, San Francisco, where he contributed to sound compression (Dolby Digital, AAC, MP3), wireless networking, fingerprinting, and spatial/“3-D audio” technologies. Later, he was Associate Professor and Director of the undergraduate and graduate programs in music engineering technology at the University of Miami, Florida, where he also held a dual appointment in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Cheng holds various U.S. and international patents, has published technical papers, and has presented at various conferences. His technical work includes collaborations and consulting work with the U.S. Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory, Fujitsu-Ten USA, Starkey Laboratories, America Online, and the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). Cheng was an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer for the Circuits and Systems Society from 2009-2010, and was a Westinghouse (Intel) Science Talent Search national finalist many years ago.
Cheng holds degrees in Electrical Engineering (Ph.D., M.S.E. University of Michigan), Electro-Acoustic Music (M.A. Dartmouth College), and physics (B.A. Harvard University).
Personally, Dr. Cheng is an American Born Chinese (ABC), serves as his family’s genealogist, and traces his roots back to Toi San, Guang Dong Province and Xing Hua, Jiang Su Province, China. He also has a background in music, and his electro-acoustic compositions have been presented at various U.S. and international venues.
Disruptive technologies and business processes can be transformative, but they often come from unexpected places – and can have unpredictable effects. While you can’t fully plan for what the chaos of innovation will do to your organization, what lessons might you learn in advance in order for innovation to be as constructive as possible? This session focuses on broad areas which might provide lessons in innovation readiness: strategically implementing digital transformation, better understanding your corporate culture, applying tactical entrepreneurship and design thinking often found in startups; considering how future trends in computing could influence your strategic preparation, etc.
Renaud Fournier is a senior business and digital transformation executive with over 25 years of experience, currently serving as the Chief Officer for Business and Digital Transformation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He joined MIT in September 2023 in this newly established role, where he leads a team focused on simplifying business operations and systems for the MIT community.
Fournier is an alumnus of MIT, holding a Master's degree in Operations Research from the institution. His extensive experience spans both higher education and the private sector, with his most recent position being at New York University, where he led their digital transformation efforts.
At MIT, Fournier is spearheading a comprehensive digital transformation initiative aimed at modernizing the institute's enterprise systems and data architecture. His vision includes creating easy-to-use and well-integrated systems, along with making data more comprehensible and accessible for reporting and analysis.
Fournier's approach involves addressing systems, processes, data, and support holistically while engaging the MIT community throughout the transformation journey. He is currently developing a multi-year roadmap of digital transformation projects in collaboration with various departments and stakeholders across the institute.
With his expertise in implementing systems and solving data challenges, Fournier is well-positioned to guide MIT through its digital evolution, aiming to free up the community's time and enable them to achieve their greatest impact.
The primary goal of the MIT Business and Digital Transformation office is to reduce the administrative burden and thereby free up our community’s time so that they can achieve their greatest impact. Innovation is the process of bringing about new ideas, methods, products, services, or solutions that have a significant positive impact and value. Our office, which launched in 2023, supports innovation at all levels at MIT - both in and outside of the research laboratory - and aims to modernize an organically developed 20 to 30-year-old set of enterprise systems, processes, and data.
The MIT community relies on our enterprise systems for a range of activities — everything from hiring and evaluating employees to managing research grants and facilities projects to maintaining student information. Our vision in updating our systems is 1) to create easy-to-use and well-integrated systems, streamlined processes, and comprehensible and accessible data for reporting and analysis; 2) to simplify our business processes to improve efficiency and effectiveness; 3) to modernize our enterprise systems and data architecture to take advantage of more innovative technology and functionality; and 4) to make our data accessible and actionable by implementing more robust data governance through clear ownership and accountability.
This talk shares both our plan and some best practices from recent efforts at transforming a complex collection of digital and non-digital assets into a more cohesive landscape, including a) addressing systems, processes, and data wholistically; b) developing a thoughtful and actionable multi-year roadmap of digital transformation projects; and c) engaging and assisting our entire community every step of the way.
Professor, Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Management, MIT Sloan School of Management
Dr. Donald Sull is a Professor of the Practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he directs the Measuring Culture and Strategic Agility projects and teaches courses on competitive strategy and strategy execution. Sull was formerly a Professor at Harvard Business School and London Business School and received his bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees from Harvard University.
Sull has published six books and over 100 cases and articles, including a dozen best-selling Harvard Business Review articles and MIT Sloan Management Review's most popular strategy article of all time. The Economist named him “a rising star in a new generation of management gurus” and identified his theory of active inertia as an idea that shaped business management over the past century. Fortune listed him among the ten new management gurus.
He has advised top teams and boards of more than fifty Fortune Global 500 companies, as well as non-business organizations ranging from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and the Sultan of Oman. Prior to academia, he worked as a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company and as a management investor with the leveraged buyout firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice.
Sull is the co-founder and CEO of CultureX, which leverages proprietary AI to measure and improve corporate culture, and an advisor to several start-ups, including Betterworks, Tomorrow.io, and eToro.
Corporate culture is one of the most important enablers—or obstacles—to innovation, but culture is notoriously difficult to measure. Recent advances in LLMs enable leaders to mine employee feedback to understand and improve their corporate cultures. This session will discuss how to leverage AI to measure culture and share insights from an ongoing study of innovative culture at companies including NVIDIA, SpaceX, and Novo Nordisk.
Professor, MIT Morningside Academy for Design Founding Member and Faculty Director, MIT DesignX Innovation Accelerator
Svafa Grönfeldt is a Professor of Practice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a founding member and faculty Director of MIT DesignX, a program dedicated to design innovation and entrepreneurship. Dr. Grönfeldt is the co-founder of The MET Fund, a Cambridge-based seed investment fund. She is a member of the Board of Directors of three publicly listed companies on NASDAQ OMX and the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. As a member of a team of entrepreneurs that created and scaled two global life science companies, her professional career has been focused on organizational design for high-growth companies. As a venture designer, she works in parallel in industry and academia with teams of people from around the world to build companies, brands, experiences, academic programs, processes, and organizational structures designed to improve business results and workplace well-being. Applying the lens of design with a concern for human needs to solve complex problems has been a focal point of her work. Dr. Grönfeldt holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics
No model or mathematical formula alone can capture the complexity of our world, with all its emotional, cultural, and human variables that are difficult to define and measure. Therefore, we must design. To cope with complexity, we often oversimplify and seek quick models to make sense of the world and predict outcomes. However, this approach can hinder creative problem-solving and contradict the essence of innovation.
As a method of synthesis, design is a fundamental human ability that relies on intuition, prediction, and facts to envision and create pathways to a better future. Designing generates meaning by inventing new wholes that exceed the sum of their parts through an interactive, collaborative process. By involving stakeholders in the design process to deeply understand their needs and the context of innovation, design uncovers opportunities for problem-solving that conventional analytical methods alone cannot achieve. The design process reveals hidden opportunities within complex situations, enabling a creative way forward. Thus, design is essential in our quest for a more sustainable and equitable future alongside science and technology.
Director, MIT FutureTech Research Project at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) Principal Investigator, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy
Neil Thompson is the Director of the FutureTech research project at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and a Principal Investigator at MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy.
Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of Innovation and Strategy at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he co-directed the Experimental Innovation Lab (X-Lab), and a Visiting Professor at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard. He has advised businesses and government on the future of Moore’s Law, has been on National Academies panels on transformational technologies and scientific reliability, and is part of the Council on Competitiveness’ National Commission on Innovation & Competitiveness Frontiers.
He has a PhD in Business and Public Policy from Berkeley, where he also did Masters degrees in Computer Science and Statistics. He also has a masters in Economics from the London School of Economics, and undergraduate degrees in Physics and International Development. Prior to academia, He worked at organizations such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Bain and Company, the United Nations, the World Bank, and the Canadian Parliament.
Firms always face a choice for where to source their innovation: do they hire internal researchers? Work with startups or external companies? There are many options. In this talk, I will present results from research on how firms are sourcing digital innovations, and then I will speak specifically about AI and how to view it in this framework.
Mr. Glickman joined the Industrial Liaison Program in January 2000, serving as the MIT liaison for companies worldwide, and joined the senior management of the office in 2005.
Prior to joining ILP, Todd was Assistant Executive Director of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the professional society for meteorologists, which is based in Boston. At AMS, Todd's responsibilities included strategic planning for conferences, headquarters' liaison with AMS member boards and committees, support to the AMS Council, and public relations. In addition, Todd was Managing Editor for the AMS Glossary of Meteorology (2nd edition).
From 1979 to 1994, Todd held a variety of positions with WSI Corporation of Billerica, MA, including Manager, New Product Development, Media Marketing Manager, and Manager of the Government Program Office. WSI was a pioneer in the development of real-time weather information, providing value-added information and workstations for clients in media, aviation, industry, academia, and government. Some of Todd's projects included development of the weather data/information infrastructure for The Weather Channel; the introduction of digital satellite and radar imagery for television; planning and implementation of a network of weather briefing systems for the Federal Aviation Administration; and serving as liaison with the National Weather Service and professional organizations. In addition, Todd was instrumental in helping to develop the public-private partnership between the weather information industry and the Federal government.
Concurrently, Todd has a more than 30-year career as a radio meteorologist, and has been heard on dozens of stations nationwide. Today, he can be heard occasionally on all-news WCBS Newsradio-88 in New York City. He has chaired numerous meteorological conferences and symposia, and served on a number of boards and committees for the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He was awarded the AMS Seal of Approval for Radio Weathercasting in 1979, and was elected a Fellow of the AMS in 1997.
Todd's interests include transportation systems of all types, and he is an officer and past-trustee of the Seashore Trolley Museum of Kennebunkport, Maine. At MIT, Todd an officer and trustee of the Technology Broadcasting Corporation, which oversees the campus radio station WMBR-FM. He also volunteers as the academic advisor to a group of MIT freshman.
Hong Fan is a Program Director at the Office of Corporate Relations at MIT. She joined OCR in August 2016, brought with her 20+ years of international work experience across semiconductor, consumer electronics, telecom, and higher education.
Prior to joining OCR, Hong spent 12 years in the semiconductor industry with executive functions in strategic marketing, business development, corporate strategy, product management, and product marketing at Analog Devices and MediaTek. During those years, Hong played instrumental roles in identifying emerging business opportunities related to wireless communication networks, smartphones, wearable devices, Internet of Things (IoT), and medical devices and applications. She led cross-functional teams in defining and driving product and market strategy for businesses with annual revenue ranging from $30 million to $100 million.
Prior to joining the semiconductor industry, Hong spent 6 years in the telecommunications and electronics industry, leading engineering teams at companies such as Lucent Technologies and Watkins-Johnson Company for the development of digital signal processing, wireless communications, and micro-controller software.
Before coming to US, Hong was a strategic research staff at the President Office of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, one of the oldest universities in China. She was the first woman to hold this highly selective position.
Hong has a B.S in Electronic Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Maryland at College Park, and an MBA from Sloan School of Management at MIT. She received numerous academic honors and awards including the McKinsey & Co. Scholarship, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and the Shanghai Outstanding College Graduate Award.
MIT President Emeritus Ray and Maria Stata Professor, MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)
Rafael Reif served as the 17th President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) between July 2012 and January 2023, where he led MIT’s pioneering efforts to help shape the future of higher education. A champion for both fundamental science and MIT’s signature style of interdisciplinary, problem-centered research, he is also pursuing an aggressive agenda to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship.
In education, his central focus has been the development of the Institute’s latest experiments in online learning, MITx and edX, which he spearheaded in his previous role as MIT provost. As of March 2017, the open online learning platform edX had engaged more than 11million unique learners. The final report of his Institute-wide Task Force on the Future of MIT Education spurred rapid adoption of blended learning models in MIT classrooms and the October 2015 announcement of a MicroMaster’s credential from MITx, the Institute’s portfolio of massive open online courses.
In keeping with MIT’s mission to “bring knowledge to bear on the world’s great challenges,” in May 2014, Dr. Reif launched the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, and in October 2015, Dr. Reif and his leadership team issued MIT’s Plan for Action on Climate Change, centered on research, education, campus sustainability and a strategy of industry engagement.
To enhance MIT’s innovation ecosystem and equip the next generation of innovators to drive their ideas to impact, in October 2016 Dr. Reif launched The Engine, an accelerator specially geared to help“tough tech”ventures deliver innovations that address humanity’s great challenges. Additional steps include the October 2013 launch of the MIT Innovation Initiative, the creation of the MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node, a new Minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program.
To accelerate research and innovation at the nanoscale, MIT is also constructing MIT.nano, a major new facility at the heart of campus set to open in 2018. And because MIT’s entrepreneurial ecosystem extends well beyond the campus, Dr. Reif is leading an ambitious, decade-long redevelopment initiative in Kendall Square.
On May 6, 2016, Dr. Reif announced the $5 billion “MIT Campaign for a Better World.”A member of the MIT faculty since 1980, Dr. Reif has served as director of MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories, as associate department head for Electrical Engineering, as head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and as provost.
An elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Reif is the inventor or co-inventor on 13 patents, has edited or co-edited five books and has supervised 38 doctoral theses. He received the degree of Ingeniero Eléctrico from Universidadde Carabobo, Valencia, Venezuela, and his doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
MIT Vice President for Research, MIT Office of the President Jerome C Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow
Jesus A. del Alamo is the Donner Professor and Professor of Electrical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He obtained a Telecommunications Engineer degree from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. From 1985 to 1988 he was with Nippon Telegraph and Telephone LSI Laboratories in Japan and since 1988 he has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2013 until 2019, he served as Director of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories at MIT. His current research interests are focused on nanoelectronics based on compound semiconductors and ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors.
Prof. del Alamo was an NSF Presidential Young Investigator. He is a member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Engineering and Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Physical Society and the Materials Research Society. He is the recipient of the Intel Outstanding Researcher Award in Emerging Research Devices, the Semiconductor Research Corporation Technical Excellence Award, the IEEE Electron Devices Society Education Award, the University Researcher Award by Semiconductor Industry Association and Semiconductor Research Corporation, the IPRM Award and the IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Electron Device Letters. He is the author of “Integrated Microelectronic Devices: Physics and Modeling” (Pearson 2017, 880 pages), a rigorous and up to date description of transistors and other contemporary microelectronic devices.
Entrepreneur, Engineer, and Investor, Stata Space Co-Founder and Board Member, Analog Devices
Ray Stata is a prominent American entrepreneur, engineer, and investor born on November 12, 1934, in Oxford, Pennsylvania. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In 1965, Stata co-founded Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) with his MIT classmate Matthew Lorber in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He served as ADI's President from 1971 to 1991, CEO from 1973 to 1996, and Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1973 to March 2022. Under his leadership, ADI became a worldwide leader in data conversion and signal-processing technology.
Before founding ADI, Stata co-founded Solid State Instruments, which was later acquired by Kollmorgen Corporation. He is also the founder of Stata Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that has funded numerous Boston area startups.
Stata has been actively involved in industry organizations and public service. He co-founded and served as the first President of the Massachusetts High Technology Council, advocating for engineering education and university research funding. He was also a board member of the Semiconductor Industry Association from 1996 to 2013.
Throughout his career, Stata has received numerous prestigious awards, including:
- Election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1990) - Election to the National Academy of Engineering (1992) - IEEE Founder's Medal (2003) - Semiconductor Industry Association's Robert M. Noyce Award for Leadership (2001) - EE Times "Lifetime Achievement" award (2008) - Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award from the Global Semiconductor Alliance (2010)
Stata has maintained strong ties with MIT, serving on various committees and contributing significantly to the institution. In 1997, he and his wife Maria made a $25 million donation for the construction of the Ray and Maria Stata Center on the MIT campus.
Ray Stata married Maria in June 1962, and they reside in the Boston area. They have two children: Raymie, who became Yahoo!'s CTO, and Nicole, an entrepreneur and founder of Boston Seed Capital.
Known for his independent thinking and willingness to challenge conventional wisdom, Stata has played a crucial role in shaping the semiconductor industry and fostering innovation in technology.
Director, MIT.nano, Fariborz Maseeh (1990) Professor of Emerging Technology, MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)
Vladimir Bulović is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, holding the Fariborz Maseeh Chair in Emerging Technology. He directs the Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory, co-leads the MIT-Eni Solar Frontiers Center, leads the Tata GridEdge program, and is the Founding Director of MIT.nano, MIT's new 200,000 sqft nano-fabrication, nano-characterization, and prototyping facility. He is an author of over 250 research articles (cited over 50,000 times and recognized as the top 1% of the most highly cited in the Web of Science). He is an inventor of over 100 U.S. patents in areas of light emitting diodes, lasers, photovoltaics, photodetectors, chemical sensors, programmable memories, and micro-electro machines, majority of which have been licensed and utilized by both start-up and multinational companies. The three start-up companies Bulović co-founded jointly employ over 350 people, and include Ubiquitous Energy, Inc., developing nanostructured solar technologies, Kateeva, Inc., focused on development of printed electronics, and QD Vision, Inc. (acquired in 2016) that produced quantum dot optoelectronic components. Products of these companies have been used by millions. Bulović was the first Associate Dean for Innovation of the School of Engineering and the Inaugural co-Director of MIT’s Innovation Initiative, which he co-led from 2013 to 2018. For his passion for teaching Bulović has been recognized with the MacVicar Fellowship, MIT’s highest teaching honor. He completed his Electrical Engineering B.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees at Princeton University.
Dimitri Antoniadis is a distinguished figure in the field of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He currently holds the position of Ray and Maria Stata Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Professor Emeritus) at MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).
Born in Athens, Greece, Antoniadis received his B.S. in Physics from the National University of Athens in 1970 and later earned his Ph.D., though the specific institution for his doctoral studies is not mentioned in the provided information.
Antoniadis has been a Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT since 1978, showcasing a long and dedicated career in academia. His research interests primarily focus on electronic, magnetic, optical and quantum materials and devices, as well as nanoscale materials, devices, and systems.
Throughout his career, Antoniadis has made significant contributions to the field of microelectronics. He co-founded and served as the first director of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) at MIT, demonstrating his leadership in advancing microsystems research and development.
In recognition of his outstanding achievements and contributions to his field, Antoniadis was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2019, alongside his colleagues Anantha Chandrakasan and David Karger.
Antoniadis has also been involved in industry collaborations, having previously served as a Director at IBIS Technology Corp. His work has been instrumental in reasserting U.S. leadership in microelectronics, with his involvement in strategies for universities to help the United States regain its position as a semiconductor superpower.
As a respected member of the MIT community, Antoniadis continues to contribute to the field of electrical engineering and computer science, leaving a lasting impact on both academia and industry through his research, leadership, and mentorship.
- Track 4: Healthcare - Track 5: Artificial Intelligence - Track 6: Quantum 2.0
Professor, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Director, Center for Integrated Circuits and Systems
Prof. Hae-Seung (Harry) Lee received a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1984, where he developed self-calibration techniques for A/D converters.
Since 1984, he has been on the faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, where he is now an Advanced Television and Signal Processing Professor of Electrical Engineering and the Director of the Center for Integrated Circuits and Systems. He has acted as a Consultant to Maxim Integrated, Analog Devices, Inc., and MIT Lincoln Laboratories, among others. He has also served on the Technology Advisory Committee for Samsung Electronics, Cypress Semiconductor, Sensata Technologies, and Dual Aperture, Inc. He co-founded several companies including SMaL Camera Technologies, Cambridge Analog Technologies, Omni Design Technologies, and Merlin Tech.
His research interests are in the areas of analog integrated circuits with an emphasis on analog-to-digital converters in scaled CMOS technologies as well as medical electronics. Prof. Lee is a recipient of the 1988 Presidential Young Investigators’ Award and a co-recipient of the ISSCC Jack Kilby Outstanding Student Paper Award in 2002 and 2006. He has served a number of technical program committees for various IEEE conferences, including the International Electron Devices Meeting, the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, the Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, and the IEEE Symposium on VLSI circuits. Prof. Lee is an inventor or a co-inventor of 57 issued U.S. patents and numerous international patents. He has published more than 150 journal and conference papers and is a Fellow of IEEE.
Associate Professor, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Assistant Professor, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Assistant Professor, MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Assistant Professor, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Associate Professor, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Assistant Professor, MIT AT&T Career Development Chair Professor, MIT Media Arts and Sciences Founder and Director, Nano-Cybernetic Biotrek Research Lab
Dr. Peter Lohse joined the Office of Corporate Relations (OCR) in October 2018 as Program Director.
Lohse comes to OCR with deep and broad knowledge and expertise in the pharma, biotech, and other life sciences-driven industries including agro, nutrition, chemical, and consumer products. As a scientist and entrepreneur, he has an extensive background developing business and managing partnerships with large corporations, early-stage companies, academia, and non-profit organizations. Most recently, Lohse was V.P, Operations and Business Development for InnovaTID Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge. Before that, he was a Strategy Consultant for Eutropics Pharmaceuticals, an emerging biotech company in Cambridge.
Prior to this, Dr. Lohse was Director, Scientific Operations & Innovation Program Director for Eli-Lilly’s open innovation platform, InnoCentive, Inc. in Waltham. Earlier in his career, he held positions with increasing responsibility at ArQule of Woburn, Phylos in Lexington, and Novartis Pharma in Switzerland.
Lohse earned his M.S., Chemistry & Applied Sciences and his Ph.D., Organic Chemistry at Federal institute of Technology (ETH) in Switzerland. He earned his M.B.A., Strategy, Finance, Marketing as a Sloan Fellow at MIT. He also held the position Research Fellow, Molecular Biology at Harvard Medical School - Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston (with Professor J. Szostak, Nobel Prize 2009), This was a Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship -- In vitro selection of functional RNAs.
Professor of the Practice, MIT Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department (EECS) Chief technology officer, Analog Business for Texas Instruments Director, TI Silicon Valley Labs
Ahmad Bahai is a senior vice president and chief technology officer (CTO) of Texas Instruments, responsible for guiding breakthrough innovation, corporate research, and Kilby Labs.
Dr. Bahai is a Professor of the Practice at MIT, an IEEE Fellow, and a member of the US Department of Commerce’s Industrial Advisory Committee related to the CHIPS for America Act. He was an adjunct professor at Stanford University from 2017-2022 and a professor in residence at the University of California, Berkeley from 2001-2010. Throughout his career, Dr. Bahai has held a number of leadership roles including director of research labs and chief technology officer of National Semiconductor, technical manager of a research group at Bell Laboratories, and founder of Algorex, a communication and acoustic IC and system company that was acquired by National Semiconductor.
He holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College, University of London and a doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering from the UC Berkeley.
Recent innovations in semiconductor technology and biochemistry have brought about opportunities for realizing the long sought-after dream of personalized care. Periodic clinical-quality readings of biomarkers and vital signs provide the data needed to build a digital twin of one’s biological profile based on an AI-generated model. The digital twin will be a powerful tool for prevention, diagnosis, prognosis as well as therapeutic plans. The “Waves, Bits, and Molecules”” lab at MIT envisions transformational improvements in healthcare and life quality through innovations in advanced technologies at the intersection of semiconductor technology, biochemistry, and machine learning. In this talk, we review innovative semiconductor technologies such as electrochemical, Ultrasonic, photoacoustic, RF, and magnetic sensors and nanoactuators, which can transform the future of personalized diagnostics and treatments.
Professor of Electrical Engineering, MIT Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department Professor, MIT Biological Engineering
Dr. Jongyoon Han is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received a B.S.(1992) and an M.S.(1994) degree in physics from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, and a Ph.D. in applied physics from Cornell University in 2001. He received the NSF CAREER (2003) and the Analytical Chemistry Young Innovator Award (ACS, 2009). His current research is focused on engineering innovative microfluidic solutions to various biomanufacturing challenges, including upstream and downstream bioprocessing of CHO and HEK 293 cells, assays for critical quality attributes (CQAs) for cell therapies, and methodologies for safety assurance. He is currently the lead Principal Investigator for MIT’s participation in NIIMBL (The National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals). He is also a co-lead PI for CAMP IRG in SMART Centre, Singapore, where novel CQAs for cell therapies are being developed.
Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has revolutionized cancer care, yet its manufacturing remains challenging due to variability in quality and efficacy. In this talk we introduce a novel microfluidic, label-free cellular biophysical profiling assay that rapidly assesses the functional phenotypes of CAR T cells. Our assay leverages biophysical features such as cell size and deformability to directly correlate with critical functional attributes, including the CD4:CD8 ratio, effector and central memory subtypes, and killing potency. Validated through extensive longitudinal studies across multiple CAR T batches from different donors and culture platforms, this method requires fewer than 10,000 cells and completes profiling within 10 minutes. The assay provides an efficient means to predict CAR T cell quality at critical manufacturing stages, thereby potentially reducing batch failure rates and enhancing therapeutic consistency.
Associate Professor, MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research
Mark Harnett studies how the biophysical features of individual neurons, including ion channels, receptors, and membrane electrical properties, endow neural circuits with the ability to process information and perform the complex computations that underlie behavior. As part of this work, the Harnett lab was the first to describe the physiological properties of human dendrites, the elaborate tree-like structures through which neurons receive the vast majority of their synaptic inputs. Harnett also examines how computations are instantiated in neural circuits to produce complex behaviors such as spatial navigation.
Mark Harnett joined the McGovern Institute in 2015 and is currently an associate professor and graduate officer in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He received his BA in Biology from Reed College in Portland, Oregon and his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining MIT, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus where he worked with Jeff Magee.
The thousands of inputs a single neuronal cell receives can interact in complex ways that depend on their spatial arrangement and on the biophysical properties of their respective dendrites. For example, operations such as coincidence detection, pattern recognition, input comparison, and simple logical functions can be carried out locally within and across individual branches of a dendritic tree. In this talk, we will present the hypothesis that the brain leverages these fundamental integrative operations within dendrites to increase the processing power and efficiency of neural computation. We will focus on sensory processing and spatial navigation, with the goal of understanding the mechanistic basis of these brain functions.
Professor, MIT Materials Science and Engineering Professor, MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Professor Anikeeva received her BS in physics from St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University in 2003 and a PhD in materials science and engineering from MIT in 2009. She completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford University, where she created devices for optical stimulation and recording from brain circuits. She joined the MIT faculty in 2011. She serves as the director of the K. Lisa Yang Brain-Body Center at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and is an associate director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics.
Solid-state electronic devices and biological systems exhibit drastically disparate materials properties. While semiconductor devices are often hard, brittle, and bound to flat wafers, biological electronics, such as our nervous system, are soft, mobile, and three-dimensional. Our group bridges this material divide between synthetic and biological electronics by creating multifunctional fibers capable of minimally-invasive interfacing with the organs while integrating advanced sensing and stimulation capabilities. This talk will highlight the development and applications of multifunctional fibers to recording and modulation of neural activity in the brain and in the gastrointestinal tract in behaving subjects. Finally, it will demonstrate how bioelectronic devices can be applied to uncover neural circuits underlying gut-brain communication, paving the way to future gut-centric therapies for neurological and psychiatric disorders.
Chuan Tang joined the Office of Corporate Relations (OCR) as Senior Industrial Liaison Officer in December 2012.
Dr. Tang comes to OCR with more than 15 years of industry experience with both multi-national corporations and start-ups in North America and China. Most recently, he spent seven years at Motorola Mobility as Senior Principal Engineer where he led broadband product development for cable service providers worldwide. Before that, Tang was Director of Engineering at Rainbow Global Semiconductor Corp in Sharon, MA. Prior to Rainbow, he held positions of increasing responsibility at Applied Micro Circuits Corp (Principal Engineer), ASIC Design Services (Director of Product Development), Agere Systems (Design Center Manager), China, and at Cableshare Interactive Technologies (Senior Design Engineer), Ontario.
Tang received his B.S., Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University in China, his M.S., Electrical Engineering at Peking University in China, and his Ph.D., Electrical Engineering at the University of Windsor in Canada.
Breene M. Kerr (1951) Professor, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering
Bilge Yildiz is the Breene M. Kerr (1951) Professor in the Nuclear Science and Engineering and the Materials Science and Engineering Departments at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she leads the Laboratory for Electrochemical Interfaces. Yildiz’s research focuses on laying the scientific groundwork to enable next generation electrochemical devices for energy conversion and information processing. The scientific insights derived from her research guide the design of novel materials and interfaces for efficient and durable solid oxide fuel cells, electrolytic water splitting, brain-inspired computing, and solid state batteries. Yildiz laboratory has made significant contributions in advancing the molecular-level understanding of ion diffusion, oxygen reduction, water splitting and charge transfer mechanisms in mixed ionic-electronic conducting oxides. Yildiz’s research has uncovered the effects of surface chemistry, elastic strain, dislocations, and strong electric fields on the reactivity, efficiency, and degradation in these applications. Her approach combines computational and experimental analyses at the atomic and electronic level, using in situ scanning tunneling and X-ray spectroscopy together with first-principles calculations and novel atomistic simulations. Yildiz’s teaching and research efforts have been recognized by the Argonne Pace Setter (2006), ANS Outstanding Teaching (2008), NSF CAREER (2011), IU-MRS Somiya (2012), the ECS Charles Tobias Young Investigator (2012), the ACerS Ross Coffin Purdy (2018) and the LG Chem Global Innovation Contest (2020) awards. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (2021), the Royal Society of Chemistry (2022), and the Electrochemical Society (2023) and an elected member of the Austrian Academy of Science (2023).
Physical neural networks made of analog resistive switching processors are promising platforms for analog computing and for emulating biological synapses. State-of-the-art resistive switches rely on either conductive filament formation or phase change. These processes suffer from poor reproducibility or high energy consumption, respectively. Our work, on one hand, focuses on understanding and controlling the variability of the conductive filament formation in insulating oxide materials. On the other hand, we are innovating alternative synapse designs that rely on a deterministic charge-controlled mechanism, modulated electrochemically in a solid state, and that consists of shuffling the smallest cation, the proton. As typical throughout our research, here, too, we combine experimental synthesis, fabrication, and characterization with first principles-based computational modeling to gain a deep understanding and control of these promising devices.
Tess Smidt joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science as an Assistant Professor in September 2021. She earned her SB in Physics from MIT in 2012 and her PhD in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2018. She is the principal investigator of the Atomic Architects group at the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), where she works at the intersection of physics, geometry, and machine learning to design algorithms that aid in the understanding and design of physical systems. Her research focuses on machine learning that incorporates physical and geometric constraints, with applications to materials design. Prior to joining the MIT EECS faculty, she was the 2018 Alvarez Postdoctoral Fellow in Computing Sciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Software Engineering Intern on the Google Accelerated Sciences team, where she developed Euclidean symmetry equivariant neural networks which naturally handle 3D geometry and geometric tensor data.
Jeffrey Cheah Career Development Chair, Associate Professor, MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE)
Rafael Gomez-Bombarelli (Rafa) is the Jeffrey Cheah Career Development Professor at MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering since 2018. Rafa received BS, MS, and PhD (2011) degrees in chemistry from Universidad de Salamanca (Spain), followed by postdoctoral work at Heriot-Watt (UK) and Harvard Universities, and a stint in industry at Kyulux North America. He has been awarded the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation "Machine Learning in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering Awards" in 2021 and the Google Faculty Research Award in 2019. He was co-founder of Calculario a Harvard spinout company, was Chief Learning Officer of ZebiAI, a drug discovery startup acquired by Relay Therapeutics in 2022 and serves as consultant and scientific advisor to multiple startups
AI’s influence is undeniable in the digital realm, affecting consumers’ lives and corporate operations. Transferring these advancements to sectors producing physical goods, such as drug discovery and biotech, commodity chemicals, materials for energy and sustainability, and manufacturing, presents a thrilling prospect and a translational challenge. This talk will explore the present use cases and the potential of applying generative AI within the chemistry and materials domain. Unlike a large part of the tech sector, these industries are capital-intensive and cautious, meaning that AI must bridge an “execution gap” between the digital and physical realms for value generation. We will outline strategies to overcome current technical and cultural hurdles.
Song Han is an associate professor at MIT EECS. He received his PhD degree from Stanford University. He proposed the “Deep Compression” technique including pruning and quantization that is widely used for efficient AI computing, and “Efficient Inference Engine” that first brought weight sparsity to modern AI chips, which is a top-5 cited paper in 50 years of ISCA. He pioneered the TinyML research that brings deep learning to IoT devices. His team’s recent work on large language model quantization and acceleration (SmoothQuant, AWQ, StreamingLLM) improved the efficiency of LLM inference, adopted by NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM. Song received best paper awards at ICLR and FPGA, faculty awards from Amazon, Facebook, NVIDIA, Samsung and SONY. Song was named “35 Innovators Under 35” by MIT Technology Review, NSF CAREER Award, and Sloan Research Fellowship. Song was the cofounder of DeePhi (now part of AMD), and cofounder of OmniML (now part of NVIDIA). Song developed the EfficientML.ai course to disseminate efficient ML research.
This talk presents efficient multi-modal LLM innovations with algorithm and system co-design. I’ll first present VILA, a visual language model deployable on the edge. It is capable of visual in-context learning, multi-image reasoning, video captioning and video QA. Followed by SmoothQuant and AWQ for LLM quantization, which enables VILA deployable on edge devices, bringing new capabilities for mobile vision applications. Second, I’ll present StreamingLLM, a KV cache optimization technique for long conversation and QUEST, leveraging sparsity for KV cache compression.
Chris Dunphy joined Corporate Relations in July 2023 as Program Director. He focuses on ILP members and prospects in Japan, the Middle East, and the government.
Chris has over 20 years of experience in business development, operations, and strategy roles with private and public organizations. Most recently, he established the Director of Business Development position at Boston MedFlight. Prior to joining MedFlight, he worked for the US Department of Commerce and provided consulting services on federal acquisition procedures, defense aerospace and naval research, and foreign military sales.
Prior to this, he spent a decade with Raytheon, holding multiple roles, including Chief of Staff for Business Development and strategy and Business Development Lead for Seapower Undersea Systems. Chris served for 20 years as a United States Naval Aviator in Southeast Asia and on multiple Middle East battle group deployments. Additional tours of duty included advanced pipeline flight instructor, Naval Recruiting District New England, and Aircraft Operations with the Defense Contract Management Agency.
Chris received his B.S. in Economics from the United States Naval Academy, and he earned his M.B.A. at the FW Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College.
Henry Ellis Warren (1894) Professor, MIT Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Professor of Physics Director, Center for Quantum Engineering Associate Director, Research Laboratory of Electronics
Dr. William D. Oliver is appointed Henry Ellis Warren (1894) Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He serves as the inaugural Director of the MIT Center for Quantum Engineering and as Associate Director of the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics. He spent 20 years at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, most recently as Laboratory Fellow. Will’s research interests include the materials, fabrication, design, and implementation of superconducting qubit processors, as well as the development of cryogenic packaging and control electronics for extensible quantum computing applications. Will is an avid public speaker, technical lecturer, educator, entrepreneur, and coauthor of more than 130 peer-reviewed manuscripts on quantum science and technology. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Physical Society (APS), Senior Member of the IEEE; serves on the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee and the US Committee for Superconducting Electronics; and was a coauthor of the 2019 National Academies consensus study report entitled, “Quantum Computing: Progress and Prospects”. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Stanford University in 2003.
Quantum computers are fundamentally different than conventional computers. They promise to address certain problems that are practically prohibitive and even impossible to solve using today’s supercomputers. The challenge is building one that is large enough to be useful. In this talk, we will provide an overview of contemporary quantum computing at an intuitive level, including the technology, the promise, the hype, and the challenges ahead associated with realizing useful quantum computers at scale.
Dirk Englund received his BS in Physics from Caltech in 2002. Following a Fulbright year at TU Eindhoven, he earned an MS in electrical engineering and a PhD in Applied Physics in 2008, both from Stanford University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University until 2010 when he started his group as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics at Columbia University. In 2013, he joined the faculty of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Dirk's research focuses on quantum technologies based on semiconductor and optical systems. Outside the office, Dirk enjoys doing sports, music, and spending time with family and friends.
The world of quantum mechanics holds enormous potential to address unsolved problems in communications, computation, precision measurements, and machine learning/AI. Dr. Englund's QP-Group at MIT pursues experimental and theoretical research towards machine learning hardware and critical quantum technologies (computing, networking, sensing) by precision control of photons and atomic systems, combining techniques from atomic physics, optoelectronics, and modern semiconductor devices. In this talk, Dr. Englund will share some of the latest research conducted by his group at MIT and their potential applications.
Farnaz Niroui is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research pushes the limits of nanoscale engineering to develop new paradigms of active nanoscale devices and systems. Prior to MIT, Farnaz was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California Berkeley. She received her PhD in Electrical Engineering from MIT and completed her undergraduate studies in Nanotechnology Engineering at University of Waterloo. Farnaz has been the recipient of awards including the DARPA Young Faculty Award, NSF CAREER Award, DARPA Director’s Award, MIT EECS Outstanding Educator Award, and Junior Bose Award for Teaching Excellence.
Engineering matter, with near-atomic control, is core to designing the emergent properties that help drive today’s technology frontiers in computing, sensing and information processing. However, realizing such precision engineering is challenged by the conventional fabrication strategies lacking the desired resolution and compatibility for the integration of unconventional nanomaterials and device designs. We address these limits by developing new engineering frameworks enabling down to atomic-scale control of materials and their heterogeneous integration into functional structures with designer properties for next-generation electronics, optoelectronics, and photonic quantum technologies, which will be discussed in this talk.
Pablo Jarillo-Herrero is currently Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics at MIT. He received his “Licenciatura” in physics from the University of Valencia, Spain, in 1999. Then he spent two years at the University of California in San Diego, where he received a M.Sc. degree before going to the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2005. After a one-year postdoc in Delft, he moved to Columbia University, where he worked as a NanoResearch Initiative Fellow. He joined MIT as an assistant professor of physics in January 2008 and received tenure in 2015. He was promoted to Full Professor of Physics in 2018. His awards include the Spanish Royal Society Young Investigator Award (2006), an NSF Career Award (2008), an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2009), a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship (2009), the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Semiconductor Physics (2010), a DOE Early Career Award (2011), a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE, 2012), an ONR Young Investigator Award (2013), and a Moore Foundation Experimental Physics in Quantum Systems Investigator Award (2014). Prof. Jarillo-Herrero has been selected as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics-Web of Science (2017-present), and was elected APS Fellow (2018), Fellow of the Quantum Materials Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR, 2019), and Member at Large of the APS Division of Condensed Matter Physics (2019). Prof. Jarillo-Herrero is the recipient of the APS 2020 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize, the 2020 Wolf Prize in Physics, the 2020 Medal of the Spanish Royal Physics Society, the 2021 Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture and Medal, the 2021 Max Planck Humboldt Research Award, the 2021 US National Academy of Sciences Award for Scientific Discovery, the 2022 Dan Maydan Prize in Nanotechnology, and the 2023 Ramon y Cajal Medal from the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences. He became elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2022 and to the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences in 2023.
The XXth century saw a revolution in science and technology, Quantum 1.0, largely triggered by our basic understanding of Quantum Mechanics, the physical theory of nature. Over the coming decades, a much more advanced technological revolution, Quantum 2.0, will make use of much more advanced concepts in quantum mechanics. In order to realize these technologies, new quantum materials are needed. These materials have often defied theoretical understanding, in some cases during decades. The discovery six years ago of correlated phases and superconductivity in magic angle twisted bilayer graphene has led to the emergence of a new materials platform to investigate quantum materials, namely moiré quantum matter. These systems exhibit a plethora of quantum phases, such as correlated insulators, superconductivity, magnetism, ferroelectricity, and more. In this talk, Jarillo-Herrero will review some of the recent advances in the field, focusing on the newest generation of moiré quantum systems, where correlated physics, superconductivity, and other fascinating phases can be studied with unprecedented tunability. He will conclude with an outlook of some exciting directions in this emerging field.
On day two, after lunch at 12:40 PM, join the ILP for a unique opportunity to explore MIT through four concurrent tours, each providing an in-depth look at the institute’s innovation ecosystem. Sign-up boards will be available at the registration desk starting in the morning.
Take a guided tour of our dynamic campus and experience firsthand how MIT is making a better world. From cutting edge research to innovation, from world-renowned architecture to rich community life, the MIT campus is a treasure to explore. MIT is also the heart of the vibrant innovation district of Kendall Square, the most innovative square mile in the world – come see how academics, entrepreneurs, corporations and non-profits make it all happen.
Participants will visit a working quantum computing lab. The Quantum Science and Engineering Consortium (QSEC) within the MIT Center for Quantum Engineering (CQE), is a quantum ecosystem that connects blue-chip corporations, start-ups, venture capital firms, the Engine, and more with MIT researchers.
Set in the heart of campus, MIT.nano is the Institute’s 200,000 sf center for nanoscale science and engineering research. Take a behind the scenes tour of key research spaces, hear about the progress MIT.nano has made since its launch in 2018, and learn how this remarkable building is helping researchers from every corner of MIT explore the dawn of the Nano Age.
The MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) addresses global challenges in water and food sustainability through innovative research and collaboration. As part of the lab’s mission to drive impactful solutions, participants of the J-WAFS tour will have the opportunity to visit Professor Taşan’s and Professor Doyle's labs to explore cutting-edge projects firsthand. Doyle’s group will demonstrate their expertise in resin manufacturing alongside a small-scale purification setup for downstream processing. Their project focuses on using hydrogel microparticles for industrial purification of biological molecules including amino acids and biopharmaceuticals, offering a promising sustainable and cost-effective solution. Meanwhile, Taşan’s group will present their groundbreaking project on solid-state scrap processing, which introduces an innovative method with the potential to drastically reduce water consumption in steelmaking—a critical advancement for environmental sustainability.
Participants will be introduced to provocative exhibitions on CRISPR and AI, the magical kinetic sculptures of Arthur Ganson and Andy Cavatora, and countless unexpected treasures from the museum collection of more than a million artifacts.