School of Engineering welcomes new faculty | MIT News
The College of Engineering is welcoming 15 new school members to its departments, institutes, labs, and centers. With research and training pursuits ranging from the development of robotics and AI systems to the modeling and optimization of renewable energy techniques, they are poised to make significant contributions in new directions across the college and to a large assortment of study endeavours around the Institute.
“I am joyful to welcome our great new college,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the College of Engineering. “Their abilities and skills as educators, researchers, collaborators, and mentors will enrich the engineering neighborhood and fortify our world affect.”
Navid Azizan will be a part of the MIT college with twin appointments in the Section of Mechanical Engineering and the Institute for Knowledge, Devices, and Society (IDSS) as an assistant professor in September. He is currently a postdoc in the Autonomous Programs Laboratory at Stanford College. He gained his PhD in computing and mathematical sciences from Caltech in 2020, his MS from the University of Southern California in 2015, and his BS from Sharif University of Know-how in 2013. On top of that, he was a study intern at Google DeepMind in 2019. Azizan’s investigation pursuits broadly lie in machine mastering, command theory, mathematical optimization, and community science. He has created basic contributions to several elements of intelligent methods, which includes the style and design and examination of optimization algorithms for nonconvex and networked problems with apps to the sensible grid, dispersed computation, epidemics, and autonomy. Azizan’s work has been identified by various awards, like the 2020 Data Idea and Purposes (ITA) Graduation-Day Gold Award. He was named an Amazon Fellow in Artificial Intelligence in 2017 and a PIMCO Fellow in Knowledge Science in 2018. His study on electricity markets been given the ACM GREENMETRICS Most effective Pupil Paper Award in 2016. He was also the first-spot winner and a gold medalist at the 2008 Countrywide Physics Olympiad in Iran. He co-organizes the popular “Control meets Learning” digital seminar series.
Rodrigo Freitas joined the Department of Components Science and Engineering (DMSE) in January as the AMAX Assistant Professor. He acquired his BS and MS degrees in physics from the University of Campinas in Brazil, and MS and PhD levels in resources science and engineering from the College of California at Berkeley, followed by postdoctoral get the job done at Stanford University. Throughout his PhD, he was also a Livermore Graduate Scholar in the Resources Science Division of the Lawrence Livermore Nationwide Laboratory. He works by using a blend of theoretical, computational, and knowledge-pushed ways to study the mechanisms of microstructure evolution in materials. This study place is essential to comprehend and command products kinetics at the microstructure stage, and it has broad likely influence and software, which will guide to collaborations throughout DMSE and in the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman Higher education of Computing.
Marzyeh Ghassemi will join the Institute for Professional medical Engineering and Science and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Pc Science as an assistant professor in July. She received her PhD in computer science from MIT her MS in biomedical engineering from Oxford College and two BS degrees, in electrical engineering and computer science, from New Mexico State University. Her study focuses on creating and making use of equipment learning to human well being improvement. Ghassemi’s get the job done has been printed in leading conferences and journals including NeurIPS, FaCCT, The Lancet Electronic Wellbeing, JAMA, the AMA Journal of Ethics, and Nature Medicine, and showcased in media stores these kinds of as MIT Information, NVIDIA, and the Huffington Post. A British Marshall Scholar and American Goldwater Scholar who has finished graduate fellowships at businesses such as Xerox and the NIH, Ghassemi has been named one particular of MIT Engineering Review’s 35 Innovators Beneath 35. Ghassemi arranged MIT’s to start with Hacking Discrimination party and was awarded MIT’s 2018 Seth J. Teller Award for Excellence, Inclusion and Diversity. She also is on the Senior Advisory Council of Females in Equipment Discovering (WiML) and founded the ACM Convention on Overall health, Inference and Mastering (ACM CHIL).
Dylan Hadfield-Menell will join the Section of Electrical Engineering and Laptop Science as an assistant professor in July. Hadfield-Menell acquired his PhD in laptop science from the University of California at Berkeley, and his MS and BS (equally in computer system science and electrical engineering) from MIT. His analysis focuses on the worth alignment dilemma in artificial intelligence, and aims to assist generate algorithms that pursue the meant goals of their people. He is also fascinated in perform that bridges the hole among AI idea and functional robotics, and the problem of integrated undertaking and motion arranging. Hadfield-Menell is an NSF Graduate Investigation Fellowship Receiver and a Berkeley Fellow, with various meeting papers printed in the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Modern society and the ACM/IEEE Worldwide Meeting on Human-Robotic Conversation, amongst many others. He was the technological guide on The Long term Starts Listed here Show for the Victoria and Albert Museum, and has interned at Facebook and Microsoft.
Jack Hare joined the Section of Nuclear Science and Engineering as an assistant professor in January. He obtained his BA (2010) and his MS (2011) in organic sciences from the University of Cambridge, his MA in plasma physics from Princeton College in 2013, and his PhD in plasma physics from Imperial College or university London in 2017. Soon after his PhD, he held postdoc appointments at Imperial Higher education London, where by he has researched magnetized turbulence in superior-power-density plasmas, and at the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, wherever he labored on the design and style of diagnostics for the ITER fusion reactor challenge. At MIT, his study will target on essential plasma procedures in magnetized higher electrical power density plasmas, this kind of as magnetic reconnection and magneto-hydrodynamic turbulence. These plasmas are produced making use of powerful pulses of electrical existing generated by the new PUFFIN pulsed-electric power facility, hosted on campus at the Plasma Science and Fusion Middle.
Samuel Hopkins will be a part of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Laptop Science as an assistant professor in January 2022. Hopkins been given his PhD in laptop science from Cornell College, and his BS in pc science and arithmetic from the College of Washington. His study focuses on algorithms, optimization, and theoretical equipment discovering, in particular through the lens of convex programming relaxations. He is a Miller Fellow, an NSF Graduate Investigate Fellow, a Microsoft Research Fellow, and has received the Cornell Laptop Science Dissertation Award. Hopkins’ publications incorporate papers in FOCS, STOC, and the Annals of Statistics. In advance of coming to MIT, Hopkins was a Miller Fellow in the theory group at the University of California at Berkeley.
Michael F. Howland will join the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering as an assistant professor in September. At the moment he is a postdoc at Caltech in the Division of Aerospace Engineering. He gained his BS from Johns Hopkins College and his MS from Stanford University, each in mechanical engineering. He obtained his PhD from Stanford College in the Office of Mechanical Engineering. His study encompasses the circulation physics of Earth’s atmosphere and the modeling, optimization, and management of renewable electricity era systems. Howland’s function is targeted at the intersection of fluid mechanics, weather and climate modeling, uncertainty quantification, and optimization and regulate with an emphasis on renewable vitality systems. He makes use of synergistic techniques which includes simulations, laboratory and discipline experiments, and modeling to have an understanding of the procedure of renewable strength devices, with the purpose of strengthening the efficiency, predictability, and reliability of very low-carbon power technology. He was the receiver of the Robert George Gerstmyer Award, the Creel Family Instructing Award, and the James F. Bell Award from Johns Hopkins College. He obtained the Tau Beta Pi scholarship, NSF Graduate Investigation Fellowship, and a Stanford Graduate Fellowship.
Yoon Kim will be part of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer system Science as an assistant professor in July. Currently a investigation scientist at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, Kim gained a PhD in laptop science from Harvard University, an MS in facts science from New York College, an MA in figures from Columbia, and dual BA levels in mathematics and economics from Cornell College. Kim’s exploration focuses on device finding out and all-natural language processing. He is the receiver of a Google Fellowship.
Adrián Lozano-Duran joined the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT as an Assistant Professor in January. He acquired his PhD in aerospace engineering from the Specialized College of Madrid in 2015 on the use of graph theory to unravel the dynamics of chaotic styles in fluids. From 2016 to 2020, he was a postdoc at Stanford College working on superior-fidelity simulations of external aerodynamic apps. His analysis is centered on fixing exceptional difficulties in physics and modeling of turbulent flows applying transformative tools and creativeness. His get the job done involves turbulence theory and modeling by artificial intelligence, details theory, and quantum computing, with applications ranging from unmanned aerial autos and commercial airliners to hypersonic automobiles. He is the recipient of the Milton van Dyke Award from the American Actual physical Modern society (2017), the Centre for Turbulence Analysis Fellowship from Stanford University (2016), and the Da Vinci Award for the top rated five European dissertations on Fluid Mechanics (2015).
Kelly A. Metcalf Pate joined the Section of Biological Engineering as an assistant professor and director of the Division of Comparative Drugs in March. As director of DCM, Pate will oversee the team of veterinarians and personnel who serve as experts in animal models for the MIT community. Pate’s analysis focuses on the role of platelets in the pathogenesis of viral an infection, with an emphasis on HIV and cytomegalovirus, and on the refinement and advancement of animal styles.
Anand Natarajan joined the Division of Electrical Engineering and Pc Science as an assistant professor in September 2020. Natarajan been given his PhD in physics from MIT, and an MS in personal computer science and BS in physics from Stanford College. Natarajan’s passions heart on theoretical quantum information, significantly nonlocality (e.g., Bell inequalities and nonlocal video games), quantum complexity concept (specifically the energy of quantum interactive proof programs), and semidefinite programming hierarchies. He is the co-winner of the Most effective Paper Award at FOCS ’19 for paper NEEXP ⊆ MIP*, with John Wright, and is a gold medalist in the Worldwide Physics Olympiad. His convention papers have been released in the Proceedings of ITCS, Proceedings of FOCS, and Proceedings of CCC, among the many others. Right before becoming a member of MIT, Natarajan was a postdoc at the Institute for Quantum Facts and Subject at Caltech.
Jelena Notaros joined the Office of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in June 2020 as an assistant professor, a principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics, and a core college member of the Microsystems Technological innovation Laboratories. Notaros obtained her PhD and MS degrees from MIT in 2020 and 2017, respectively, and BS diploma from the College of Colorado Boulder in 2015. Her investigate passions are in built-in silicon photonics products, units, and purposes, with an emphasis on built-in optical phased arrays for lidar and augmented actuality. Notaros was a Major-3 DARPA Riser, a 2018 DARPA D60 Plenary Speaker, a 2021 Forbes 30 Beneath 30 Listee, a 2020 MIT RLE Early Career Development Award receiver, an MIT Presidential Fellow, a Countrywide Science Foundation Graduate Analysis Fellow, a 2019 OSA CLEO Chair’s Decide Award recipient, a 2014 IEEE R5 Scholar Paper Opposition To start with Location Award recipient, a 2019 MIT MARC Best Paper Award receiver, a 2018 MIT EECS Climbing Star, and a 2015 CU Boulder Chancellor’s Recognition Award recipient, between other honors.
Carlos Portela joined the Section of Mechanical Engineering as an assistant professor in August 2020. He gained his PhD in mechanical engineering from Caltech in 2019. He was a postdoc at Caltech underneath the steerage of professors Julia Greer, Dennis Kochmann, and Chiara Daraio. Portela’s research lies at the intersection of elements science, mechanics, and nano-to-macro fabrication with the goal of coming up with and screening novel products — with characteristics spanning from nanometers to centimeters — that generate unprecedented mechanical, optical, and acoustic houses. His recent accomplishments have furnished routes for fabrication of these so-known as “nano-architected elements” in scalable processes as perfectly as tests nanomaterials in true-entire world conditions such as supersonic affect, in collaboration with researchers at MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies. His existing software spots contain the development of novel light-weight armor resources, ultrasonic devices for healthcare purposes, and new generations of ultra-powerful structural resources. Portela is the recipient of several awards together with the Gold Paper Award at the Society of Engineering Science Meeting in 2019, the Centennial Award for the Ideal Thesis in Mechanical and Civil Engineering at Caltech, and the Caltech Rolf H. Sabersky Graduate Fellowship.
Ashia Wilson joined the Section of Electrical Engineering and Laptop or computer Science as an assistant professor in January. Wilson been given her PhD in figures from the College of California at Berkeley, and her BA in utilized mathematics from Harvard College. Her study facilities upon optimization, algorithmic conclusion-producing, dynamical programs, and fairness within just big-scale equipment learning. A Countrywide Science Basis Graduate Study Fellow, Wilson has gained the NeurIPS ’17 Spotlight Paper Award for “The Marginal Benefit of Adaptive Solutions in Equipment Learning,” and has done investigation with Microsoft and Google AI. Her papers have been posted in the Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Science, Developments in Neural Details Processing Programs, and the Intercontinental Meeting of Device Discovering, between others. Moreover, she has served as a reviewer for NeurIPS and the Journal of Device Learning.
Sixian You joined the Section of Electrical Engineering and Laptop Science as an assistant professor in March. You obtained her PhD and MS in bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and her BS in optical and electronic details from Huazhong College of Science and Technological innovation. Her investigate interests are biophotonics, microscopy, and computational imaging. She has received the Microscopy Innovation Award and the Nikon Photomicrography Competitors Picture of Difference award, and her do the job has been featured on the PNAS include and as a Mother nature Communications Editors’ Emphasize, among the other honors. The You Lab focuses on developing optical imaging applications to help noninvasive, further, more rapidly, and richer visualization of dynamic biological procedures and condition pathology. She was lately a postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley, and has been an engineer intern for Apple.
