Who’s Speaking at the Alumni Leadership Conference 2023?

President Kornbluth was sworn in as the 18th President of MIT on January 1st, 2023. After a successful career as provost of Duke University, she comes to MIT with a strong vision for the future of the Institute.

Learn More: "About MIT President Sally Kornbluth," MIT Office of the President

Professor Mądry’s research interests span algorithms, continuous optimization, and understanding machine learning from a robustness and deployability perspective. 

His work has been recognized with a number of awards, including an NSF CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, an ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Honorable Mention, and a Presburger Award. Before joining the MIT faculty, he spent time at Microsoft Research New England and on the faculty of EPFL. 

Learn more: “MIT Professor to Congress: ‘We Are at an Inflection Point’ with AI,” Slice of MIT, March 2023 

Adams is a leadership coach and consultant for scientists and engineers whose true passion is developing people, not products, and helping others tap into their own potential for personal growth. 
 
Learn more: “Inspiring Innovation: Developing People, Not Just Products,” TEDxUTK 

Professor Özdağlar’s research expertise includes optimization, machine learning, economics, and networks. Recent research focuses on designing incentives and algorithms for data-driven online systems with many diverse human-machine participants. She has investigated issues of data ownership and markets, the spread of misinformation on social media, economic and financial contagion, and social learning.  

She is the recipient of a Microsoft fellowship, the MIT Graduate Student Council Teaching Award, an NSF CAREER Award, the 2008 Donald P. Eckman Award of the American Automatic Control Council, the 2014 Teacher Award, and Keithley, Distinguished School of Engineering, and MathWorks professorships. She is an IEEE fellow, IFAC fellow, and was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians.  

Learn more: “Bringing the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing to the Forefront,” MIT News, June 2023 

Douglas’s course, The History of MIT, explores the history of science, technology, and culture through the lens of MIT. Her talk, “Rad-Lab-Like Effort,” discusses lessons learned from the MIT Radiation Lab for the Institute’s efforts on climate change and sustainability.   

Learn more: “An Invention that Inspired Instant Photography,” MIT Museum, February 2021 

Professor Paradis is a historian of communication who focuses on problems of media and the professions. His current research interrogates media and global warming, drawing on cultural studies, biographical approaches, and the history of rhetoric. He is the former head of Writing and Humanistic Studies and its successor, MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing (CMS/W). 

Learn More: “In a Humanities Media Class, MIT Students Gain Insights and Skills to Increase Support for Effective Climate Policy,” MIT Climate Portal 

Rhee is an entrepreneur, educator, investor, and strategist whose current venture, red helicopter, is a media-education platform that is uniting a forward-looking global community at the intersection of the values of kindness and math. 
 
Learn more: “The Value of Kindness at Work,” TED, February 2022  

Wickham began his one-year term as president of the MIT Alumni Association (MITAA) on July 1, 2023, and is a past member of the MIT Corporation, MITAA Board, and Annual Giving Board. Professionally, he serves as vice president and general manager of Tableau Asia Pacific, a maker of data visualization software. 

Learn more: “Meet the President: R. Robert Wickham ’93, SM ’95,” Slice of MIT, July 2023 

Schmill was appointed dean of admissions in 2008. He manages the process of selecting MIT’s outstanding student body and overseeing how financial aid is distributed. 
 

Learn more: “Reaffirming Our Commitment to Diversity,” MIT Admissions Blog, June 2023