Speakers
Richard L. Amster Jr., Director, MIT Department of Facilities, Campus Planning, Engineering & Construction
Dick Amster joined the Department of Facilities at MIT in November 2007 as director of campus planning, engineering, and construction to oversee the development and construction of capital, renewal, and space reorganization projects. Previously he had spent 26 years with Turner Construction Company in Boston and New York City, working on a wide range of assignments and projects including, most recently, as the manager of the educational facilities group, leading a team that provided owner’s project management services on public projects for cities and towns in Massachusetts. He has an undergraduate degree in English from Harvard and an MBA from Columbia.
Seth Alexander, President of MIT Investment Management Company
Seth Alexander oversees approximately $12 billion in endowment, pension, and working capital assets on behalf of MIT. Prior to joining the Institute, he was a director at the Yale Investments Office. At Yale, he was a management fellow and cotaught a course on endowment management at the Yale School of Management.
Vladimir Bulovic, MIT Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Professor Bulovic is a principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). He studies the physical properties of organic and organic/inorganic nanocrystal composite thin films and structures and the development of novel optoelectronic organic and hybrid nano-scale devices. Prior to joining MIT, he was a senior scientist and project head of strategic technology development at Universal Display Corporation (UDC) where he developed application of organic materials to light emitting and photosensitive devices. He cofounded Qd Vision Inc. in 2004 and serves as a member of its scientific advisory board. He has authored over 40 research papers and has more than 30 issued patents in the areas of organic LEDs, lasers, photodetectors, memories, and nanostructured devices. His recent honors include an NSF CAREER award, being selected for the 2004 Technology Review TR100 Innovators Who Will Create the Future List, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the nation’s highest award for academic researchers in their early careers. He received his bachelor’s degree and doctorate from Princeton University.
Anantha P. Chandrakasan, MIT Department Head of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Anantha Chandrakasan received bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. Since September 1994, he has been with MIT, where he is currently the Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Professor of Electrical Engineering and director of the MIT Microsystems Technology Labs. His research interests include micro-power digital and mixed-signal integrated circuit design, wireless microsensor system design, ultra-wideband radios, and emerging technologies. His writing has won numerous awards, and he’s coauthored and coedited several books. He held the Analog Devices Career Development Chair from 1994 to 1997 and received the NSF Career Development Award in 1995, the IBM Faculty Development Award in 1995, and the National Semiconductor Faculty Development Award in 1996 and 1997. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Stephen Carson, Director of External Affairs, MIT OpenCourseWare
Judith M. Cole, Executive Vice President and CEO, MIT Alumni Association
Judy Cole came to MIT in August 2009. Previously, she served as the associate vice president of university advancement and director of alumni relations at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Prior to Carnegie Mellon, she served in a wide variety of positions in the alumni association at Yale University. In her last position at Yale, she was the director of education and alumni services. She earned her master’s of public and private management (MPPM) from the Yale School of Management and following her graduation was a strategy consultant for the Boston Consulting Group. Before attending graduate school, she was an oil and gas banker in Houston. She serves as the treasurer of the Association of Private College and University Alumni Directors; is a member of the Board of TPC Independent 529 Plan, a nonprofit tuition prepayment consortium; and was formerly a member of the board of the Yale Club of Pittsburgh.
Pamela Delphenich, MIT Director of Campus Planning and Design
Pamela Delphenich oversees the physical development of the MIT Campus. Prior to joining the Institute, she was university planner for Yale for eleven years.
Deborah K. Fitzgerald, Dean of the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS)
Deborah Fitzgerald is Kenan Sahin Dean of SHASS and professor of the history of technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society. She received a BA in history and English from Iowa State University and a PhD in history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining the MIT faculty in 1988, she was an assistant professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. Her research focuses on agriculture in 20th century America. She is the author of The Business of Breeding: Hybrid Corn in Illinois, 1890-1920 (Cornell, 1990) and Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture (Yale University Press, 2003), which won the 2003 Theodore Saloutos Prize for best book of the year from the Agricultural History Society, of which she is a past president. She is also the cosponsor, with Professor Harriet Ritvo, of the MIT Seminar in Environmental and Agricultural History (formerly the Modern Times/Rural Places seminar).
W. Eric L. Grimson PhD ’80, MIT Chancellor and Bernard Gordon Professor of Medical Engineering
W. Eric L. Grimson was named chancellor of MIT in 2011. In this role, he has oversight responsibility for graduate and undergraduate education at MIT, student life, student services, and other areas that impact the student experience. A member of the MIT faculty since 1984, he served as head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from 2005 to 2011, as its associate department head from 2004 to 2005, and as its education officer from 2001 to 2004. He is a recipient of the Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching in the School of Engineering at MIT and in all has taught some 10,000 MIT undergrads and served as the thesis supervisor to almost 50 MIT PhD candidates. Grimson is internationally recognized for his research in computer vision, especially in applications in medical image analysis. He and his students have developed techniques for activity and behavior recognition, object and person recognition, image database indexing, image-guided surgery, site modeling, and many other areas of computer vision. A native of Saskatchewan, Canada, he received his bachelor’s in mathematics and physics from the University of Regina and a PhD in mathematics from MIT. He is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Susan Hockfield, President, MIT
Susan Hockfield has served as the 16th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since December 2004. A noted neuroscientist whose research has focused on the development of the brain, she is the first life scientist to lead MIT and holds a faculty appointment as professor of neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she holds honorary degrees from Brown University, Tsinghua University (Beijing), and the Watson School of Biological Sciences at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. Following graduation from the University of Rochester, President Hockfield earned her PhD from the Georgetown University School of Medicine while carrying out her dissertation research in neuroscience at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at San Francisco and then joined the scientific staff at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Before assuming the presidency of MIT, she was provost at Yale University, where she had taught since 1985 and had also served as dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She lives in Gray House on the MIT campus with her husband, Thomas N. Byrne, MD, and their daughter, Elizabeth. She serves as a director of the General Electric Company, a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and an overseer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In June 2011, at the invitation of President Barack Obama, she became cochair of his administration’s new Advanced Manufacturing Partnership.
Marc A. Kastner, Dean, MIT School of Science and Donner Professor of Science
Professor Kastner joined the Department of Physics in 1973, was named Donner Professor of Science in 1989, appointed department head in February 1998, and, in July 2007, became dean of the School of Science. A graduate of the University of Chicago, where he received bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees, he was a research fellow at Harvard University prior to joining MIT. He served as head of the MIT Department of Physics Division of Atomic, Condensed Matter, and Plasma Physics from 1983 to 1987 and as associate director of MIT’s Consortium for Superconducting Electronics—a collaborative program designed to advance the technology of thin-film superconducting electronics—from 1989 to 1992. He served as director of MIT’s Center for Materials Science and Engineering from 1993 to 1998.
Jeffrey L. Newton, Vice President for Resource Development, MIT
Since 2007, Jeffrey Newton has been responsible for building philanthropic support for Institute priorities from individuals, corporations, and foundations. Before joining MIT, he was dean for resource development and alumni relations at Harvard Medical School. He distinguished himself there by reorganizing the development staff to maximize return on investment and preparing the school to participate in a projected university-wide campaign. His efforts to promote the school’s strength in basic science to attract the support of non-alumni and institutions led to record levels of support. He began his career in resource development at Johns Hopkins University, where he was associate director for foundation and corporate relations from 1989 to 1993. During a subsequent decade working at the University of Miami, he served as executive director of corporation and foundation relations, assistant vice president for development and alumni relations, and assistant vice president for medical development and alumni affairs at the university’s School of Medicine. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from Kenyon College and a master’s in European history from Brown University. He is fluent in Italian. He grew up in Gambier, Ohio. For additional biographical information, see Newton’s profile in the Summer 2007 issue of Spectrvm.
John S. Reed ’61, SM ’65, Chairman of the MIT Corporation, MIT Corporation life member, Chairman and CEO, Citigroup (retired)
John Reed is known for such banking innovations as the national marketing of credit cards, disseminating ATMs worldwide, and extending Citibank’s credit card and consumer banking expertise to emerging Asian and Latin American markets. He earned bachelor’s degrees from Washington and Jefferson College and MIT, served in the U.S. Army, then earned a master’s degree in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He joined Citibank shortly after graduating and became the bank’s chairman and CEO in 1984. After the bank merged with the Travelers Co. in 1998, Reed served as chairman and co-CEO of the new company, Citigroup. He retired from Citigroup in 2000 then served as chairman of the New York Stock Exchange from September 2003 until April 2005. During this time, he helped establish new governance rules as the NYSE became a public corporation. Reed has broad experience in the governance of corporate and academic institutions. He has held long tenures on the boards of Philip Morris, United Technologies, and Monsanto. He is currently a director of MDRC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan social policy research organization. He was chairman and a trustee of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and was a board member at the Russell Sage Foundation, which supports research in the social sciences, and at the Spencer Foundation, which funds research aimed at improving education. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society, and an overseer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He also serves on the MIT Energy Initiative’s external advisory board and the Center for International Studies advisory board. He and his wife, Cynthia, live in Duxbury, Mass., and have a townhome in Boston.
Israel Ruiz SM ’01, Vice President for Finance, MIT
Israel Ruiz joined MIT in 2002 as manager of financial planning and analysis and became associate director of the Office of Budget and Financial Planning in 2003. He was named director of finance in 2005 and vice president for finance two years later. In this role, he leads a team that manages the Institute’s financing strategy, financial and capital planning, annual budgeting, receipt and disbursement of funds, accounting policies and services, research post-award management, procurement, and property management. He serves a critical role in ensuring the integrity of MIT financial reporting and compliance. In May 2011, he led the successful completion of a landmark $750 million taxable century bond offering to support MIT’s ongoing campus development program, including academic and research capital projects within the MIT 2030 development framework. In June 2011, he was nominated to serve as the Institute’s next executive vice president and treasurer by the executive committee of the MIT Corporation and has agreed to serve, pending his election by the full MIT Corporation in October 2011. Born in Barcelona, he holds a master’s degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a degree in industrial and mechanical engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. Before joining MIT, he worked as an engineer at Hewlett-Packard and at Nissan Automotive. He serves on the board of directors of the MIT Press, the Cooperative Society of Harvard and MIT (The Coop), MIT Endicott House, and the Prince of Girona Foundation, which is dedicated to promoting youth education and entrepreneurship and resolving social economic issues.
Stuart Schmill ’86, MIT Dean of Admissions
Stuart Schmill’s career at MIT began as a freshman in 1982. Following his graduation in 1986 with a degree in mechanical engineering, Schmill spent a year working as a project engineer at General Motors before returning to his alma mater in a professional role. During his long tenure at MIT, Schmill has served the Institute in a variety of positions, including director of crew; director of parent, student, and young alumni programs in the Alumni Association; director of MIT’s Educational Council; and senior associate director of admissions. He joined the admissions office in 2002, was appointed interim director in 2007, and dean in 2008. Schmill has been honored with the MIT Dean for Undergraduate Education Infinite Mile Award for Leadership and the MIT Alumni Association Harold E. Lobdell ’17 Distinguished Service Award and was named Coach of the Year in the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges, the most competitive rowing league in the country. Schmill has spoken at admissions conferences around the world and has served as trustee, founder, or advisor to a variety of organizations, including the College Board, University of Cambridge International Examinations, Wayland-Weston Rowing Association, To The Water, Inc., and the Mandela Town Hall Health Spot.
David C. Schmittlein, Dean, MIT Sloan School of Management
David C. Schmittlein was appointed the John C. Head III Dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management in October 2007. Prior to this appointment, he was the Ira A. Lipman Professor and professor of marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as deputy dean from 2000 to 2007 and interim dean during July 2007. He was chair of Wharton’s marketing department from 1994 to 2000 and vice dean and director of Wharton’s doctoral programs from 1993 to 1995. He also served as chair of the editorial board for Wharton School Publishing and was the founding director of Wharton’s interdepartmental MBA major in managing electronic commerce. He joined the Wharton faculty in 1980 after receiving his PhD and MPhil in business from Columbia University and a BA in mathematics from Brown University. His research assesses marketing processes and develops methods for improving marketing decisions. He is known for his work estimating the impact of a firm’s marketing actions, designing market and survey research, and creating effective communication, promotion, and interactive marketing strategies. He has served as a consultant on these issues for numerous manufacturing and service firms; has published more than 40 articles, primarily in leading journals in marketing, management, economics, and statistics; and his observations and research have often been featured in popular media outlets. His research, editorial work, and teaching have won numerous awards.
R. Gregory Turner ’74, MArch ’77, President, MIT Alumni Association
Greg Turner is an award-winning architect and president of Turner Duran Architects. He earned two degrees in architecture from MIT and an MBA from the University of Houston. Early in his career, he gained valuable experience at some of the most reputable and prestigious firms in the nation. At I. M. Pei & Partners, he focused on architectural design. At Philip Johnson/John Burgee Architects, he worked on a major postmodern building, AT&T’s corporate headquarters in New York City. He then moved to Texas and landed a job in Houston with CRS, founded by Bill Caudill ’47, and learned project management skills. In 1984, he decided to strike out on his own, founding R. G. Turner Architects in Houston. Today known as Turner Duran Architects, the firm has collected many awards over the years. Turner has LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) accreditation and uses his background and skills to lead the community-¬development aspects of major building projects. He brings this same communityÂbuilding focus to his year as president of the MIT Alumni Association. Turner has received the Bronze Beaver Award and the Harold E. Lobdell ’17 Distinguished Service Award. He and his wife, Ann, live in Katy, TX; their four children range in age from teens to 20s.
Lauren Vargas, Community Management Strategist, Aetna
Lauren Vargas is a Boston-based, multi-faceted communications professional with ten years of experience in community relations, internal and external corporate communications, and government affairs. She assists organizations with building sound objectives and strategies for listening and measurement and helps them engage with the communities they serve by fostering authentic relationships built on trust through conversations and participatory media. She is passionate about teaching the next generation of communication professionals and blogs on the RootReport.com, writing about integrating social media tools into communications, marketing and business strategy.
Ian A. Waitz, Dean of Engineering, Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MacVicar Faculty Fellow
Ian Waitz has been on the faculty at MIT since 1991 and was the department head in aeronautics and astronautics from 2008 until his appointment as dean in early 2011. He has made advances ingas turbine engines, fluid mechanics, combustion, and acoustics. The principal focus of his current work is on the modeling and evaluation of climate, the air-quality and noise impacts of aviation, and the assessment of technological, operational, and policy options for mitigating these impacts. He is the Director of the Partnership for AiR Transportation Noise and Emissions Reduction (PARTNER), an FAA, NASA, DOD, EPA, and Transport Canada-sponsored Center of Excellence with participants from a dozen universities and 50 industry and government organizations. In addition to scholarly publications, Waitz has contributed to several influential policy documents and scientific assessments including a report to the U.S. Congress on aviation and the environment. He holds three patents and has consulted for many organizations. In 2003, Waitz received a NASA Turning Goals Into Reality Award for Noise Reduction, and in 2007 he was awarded the FAA Excellence in Aviation Research Award. He is a Fellow of the AIAA, and an ASME and ASEE member. Waitz teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the fields of thermodynamics and energy conversion, propulsion, and experimental projects. He was honored with the 2002 MIT Class of 1960 Innovation in Education Award and an appointment as an MIT MacVicar Faculty Fellow in 2003. He received his bachelor’s from the Pennsylvania State University, masters from George Washington University, and doctorate from the California Institute of Technology.