The School of Engineering welcomes 15 new faculty members across six of its academic departments. This new group of professors, who recently began their duties at MIT or will do so within the next year, conduct research in a wide range of disciplines.
Many of these new professors specialize in research that intersects with multiple fields. In addition to positions in the School of Engineering, several of these professors have positions in other MIT units. Appointed faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) report to both the School of Engineering and the Stephen A. Schwarzman School of Computing at MIT. This year, the new professors also have joint appointments between the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Sciences.
“I am delighted to welcome this cohort of talented new faculty to the School of Engineering,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, chief innovation and strategy officer, dean of engineering, and Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “I am particularly impressed by the interdisciplinary approach that many of these new faculty take to their research. They are working in areas that are poised to have a tremendous impact. I look forward to seeing them grow as researchers and educators.”
The new engineering faculty includes:
Stephen Bates He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as an assistant professor in September 2023. He is also a member of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS). Bates uses data and artificial intelligence to make confident decisions in the presence of uncertainty. In particular, he develops tools for statistical inference with ai models, strategic behavior-affected data, and distribution-shifting environments. Bates also works on applications in life sciences and sustainability. He previously worked as a postdoc in the Statistics and EECS departments at the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley). Bates earned a bachelor's degree in statistics and mathematics from Harvard University and a doctorate from Stanford University.
Abigail Bodner He joined the Department of EECS and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences as an assistant professor in January. He is also a member of LIDS. Bodner's research interests span climate, physical oceanography, geophysical fluid dynamics, and turbulence. Previously, he worked as a Simons Junior Fellow at the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences at New York University. Bodner received his bachelor's degree in geophysics and mathematics and his master's degree in geophysics from Tel Aviv University, and his master's degree in applied mathematics and his PhD from Brown University.
Andreea Bobu '17 will join the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics as an assistant professor in July. His research lies at the intersection of robotics, mathematical human modeling, and deep learning. Previously, she was a research scientist at the Boston Dynamics ai Institute, focusing on how robots and humans can efficiently arrive at shared representations of their tasks to achieve more fluid and reliable interactions. Bobu earned a bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering from MIT and a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from UC Berkeley.
Suraj Cheema He will join the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, with a joint appointment in the Department of EECS, as an assistant professor in July. His research explores atomic-scale engineering of electronic materials to address challenges related to energy consumption, storage and generation, with the goal of achieving more sustainable microelectronics. This encompasses computing and energy technologies through integrated ferroelectric devices. He previously worked as a postdoc at UC Berkeley. Cheema earned a bachelor's degree in applied physics and applied mathematics from Columbia University and a doctorate in materials science and engineering from UC Berkeley.
Samantha Coday He joins the EECS Department as an assistant professor in July. He will also be a member of MIT's Electronics Research Laboratory. His research interests include ultra-dense power converters that enable renewable energy integration, hybrid electric aircraft, and future space exploration. To enable high-performance converters for these critical applications, his research focuses on the optimization, design and control of switched-capacitor hybrid converters. Coday earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and mathematics from Southern Methodist University and a master's degree and PhD in electrical and computer engineering from UC Berkeley.
mitchell gordon He will join the EECS Department as an assistant professor in July. He will also be a member of MIT's Computer Science and artificial intelligence Laboratory. In his research, Gordon designs interactive systems and evaluation approaches that bridge the principles of human-computer interaction with the realities of machine learning. He currently works as a postdoc at the University of Washington. Gordon earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester and a master's degree and PhD from Stanford University, all in computer science.
Kaiming He He joined the EECS Department as an associate professor in February. He will also be a member of MIT's Computer Science and artificial intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). His research interests cover a wide range of topics in computer vision and deep learning. He currently focuses on building computer models that can learn representations and develop intelligence from and for the complex world. In the long term, he hopes to augment human intelligence with improved artificial intelligence. Before joining MIT, he was a research scientist at facebook ai. He earned a bachelor's degree from Tsinghua University and a doctorate from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Anna Huang SM '08 will join the EECS and Music and Theater Arts departments as an assistant professor in September. He will help develop graduate programming focused on music technology. Previously, he spent eight years with Magenta at Google Brain and DeepMind, leading efforts in generative modeling, reinforcement learning, and human-computer interaction to support human-ai partnerships in music creation. She is the creator of Music Transformer and Coconet (which powered the Bach Google Doodle). She was a judge and organizer of the ai Song Contest. Anna holds a CIFAR ai Canada Chair at Mila, a BA in Music Composition and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Southern California, a Master's degree from the MIT Media Lab, and a PhD from Harvard University.
Yael Kalai PhD '06 will join the EECS Department as a professor in September. He is also a member of CSAIL. His research interests include cryptography, theory of computing, and security and privacy. Currently, Kalai focuses on theoretical and real-world applications of cryptography, including work on succinct and easily verifiable non-interactive proofs. He received his bachelor's degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a master's degree from the Weizmann Institute of Science, and a doctorate from MIT.
Sendhil Mullainathan He will join the EECS and Economics departments as a professor in July. His research uses machine learning to understand complex problems in human behavior, social policy, and medicine. Previously, Mullainathan spent five years at MIT before joining the Harvard faculty in 2004, and then the University of Chicago in 2018. He received his bachelor's degree in computer science, mathematics, and economics from Cornell University and his PhD from the University from Harvard.
Alex Rives He will join the EECS Department as an assistant professor in September, with senior membership at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. In his research, Rives focuses on ai for the scientific understanding, discovery, and design of biology. Rives worked with Meta as a graduate student at New York University, where he founded and led the evolutionary-scale modeling team that developed large language models for proteins. Rives received his bachelor's degree in philosophy and biology from Yale University and is completing his doctorate in computer science at New York University.
Sung Ho Shin He will join the Department of Chemical Engineering as an assistant professor in July. His research interests include control theory, optimization algorithms, high-performance computing and their applications to decision making in complex systems, such as energy infrastructures. Shin is a postdoc in the Division of Mathematics and Computer Science at Argonne National Laboratory. He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and chemical engineering from Seoul National University and a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Jessica Stark He joined the Department of Biological Engineering as an assistant professor in January. In his research, Stark is developing technologies to harness the largely untapped potential of cell surface sugars, called glycans, for immune discovery and immunotherapy. Previously, Stark was an American Cancer Society postdoc at Stanford University. He earned a bachelor's degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Cornell University and a doctorate in chemical and biological engineering from Northwestern University.
Thomas John “TJ” Wallin He joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering as an assistant professor in January. As a researcher, Wallin's interests lay in the advanced manufacturing of functional soft matter, with an emphasis on soft wearable technologies and their applications in human-computer interfaces. Previously, he was a research scientist at Meta's Reality Labs Research and worked on their haptic interaction team. Wallin earned a bachelor's degree in physics and chemistry from the College of William and Mary, and a master's degree and doctorate in materials science and engineering from Cornell University.
Gioele Zardini He joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering as an assistant professor in September. He will also join LIDS and the Institute for Data, Systems and Society. Driven by societal challenges, Zardini's research interests include co-design of sociotechnical systems, compositionality in engineering, applied category theory, decision and control, optimization and game theory, with socially critical applications to intelligent transportation systems, autonomy and complex networks. and infrastructure. He received his bachelor's, master's, and PhD in mechanical engineering with a specialization in robotics, systems, and control from eth Zurich, and spent time at MIT, Stanford University, and Motional.
