The School of Engineering welcomes 15 fresh faculty members to six of its academic departments. This fresh group of faculty, who recently joined MIT or will join next year, conducts research in a variety of disciplines.
Many of these fresh departments specialize in research that intersects many fields. In addition to positions in the School of Engineering, many of these faculty work in other units throughout MIT. Appointed faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) report to both the School of Engineering and the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. This year, fresh faculty members also have joint appointments between the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and the School of Sciences.
“I am delighted to welcome this group 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 engineering and computer science. “I am particularly struck by the interdisciplinary approach that many new faculty take in their research. They work in areas that can make a huge impact. I look forward to seeing them grow as researchers and educators.”
The fresh engineering faculty includes:
Stephen Bates he started working at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science as an assistant professor in September 2023. He is also a member of the Laboratory of Information and Decision Systems (LIDS). Bates uses data and artificial intelligence to make reliable decisions in the face of uncertainty. Specifically, he develops statistical inference tools with AI models, data influenced by strategic behavior, and distribution-shifting settings. Bates also works on applications in life sciences and sustainability. He previously worked as a postdoc in the Departments of Statistics and EECS at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). Bates earned a bachelor’s degree in statistics and mathematics from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.
Abigail Bodner joined the EECS Department and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences as an assistant professor in January. She is also a member of LIDS. Bodner’s research interests include climate, physical oceanography, geophysical fluid dynamics, and turbulence. Previously, she was a Simons Junior Fellow at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at Up-to-date York University. Bodner received her BS in geophysics and mathematics and her MS in geophysics from Tel Aviv University, and her SM in applied mathematics and PhD from Brown University.
Andrea Bobu ’17 will join the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics as an assistant professor in July. Her research combines robotics, mathematical human modeling, and deep learning. Previously, she was a research fellow at the Boston Dynamics AI Institute, focusing on how robots and humans can effectively create shared representations of their tasks to enable more fluid and reliable interactions. Bobu earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from MIT and a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Suraj Cheema in July, he will join the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, jointly at the Faculty of EECS, as an assistant professor. His research involves engineering electronic materials at the atomic scale to address the challenges of energy consumption, storage and generation, with the goal of more sustainable microelectronics. This includes computing and energy technologies via integrated ferroelectric devices. Previously, he worked as a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley. Cheema earned a bachelor’s degree in applied physics and applied mathematics from Columbia University and a PhD in materials science and engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Samantha Coday starts working at the EECS Department as an assistant professor in July. He will also be a member of the MIT Electronics Research Laboratory. Her research interests include ultra-dense power converters enabling renewable energy integration, hybrid electric aircraft, and future space exploration. To enable the operate of high-efficiency converters in these critical applications, her research focuses on the optimization, design and control of hybrid switched capacitor converters. Coday earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and mathematics from Southern Methodist University and a master’s and doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Mitchell Gordon 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 combine 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 and doctorate from Stanford University, all in computer science.
Kaiming 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. His current focus is on building computer models that can learn representations and develop intelligence from and for a elaborate world. In the long term, he hopes to augment human intelligence through improved artificial intelligence. Before joining MIT, he was a research associate at Facebook AI. He received his bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University and his PhD from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Anna Huang SM ’08 will join the EECS and Music and Theater Arts departments in September as an assistant professor. It will assist develop graduate programs focusing on music technology. Previously, she spent eight years at 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 powers the Bach Google Doodle). She was a judge and organizer of the AI Song Contest. Anna is the Canada CIFAR AI Chair at Mila, has a BA in Music Composition and a BA in Computer Science from the University of Southern California, an MA from the MIT Media Lab, and a PhD from Harvard University.
Yael Kalai Dr. ’06 will join the EECS Department as a professor in September. She is also a member of CSAIL. Her research interests include cryptography, computational theory, and security and privacy. Kalai is currently focused on both theoretical and real-world applications of cryptography, including work on concise and verifiable non-interactive proofs. She received her bachelor’s degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, her master’s degree from the Weizmann Institute of Science, and her Ph.D. from MIT.
Sendhil Mullainathan will join the EECS and Economics departments as a professor in July. His research uses machine learning to understand elaborate problems in human behavior, social policy and medicine. Previously, Mullainathan spent five years at MIT before joining the faculty at Harvard in 2004 and then at the University of Chicago in 2018. He earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics and economics from Cornell University and a PhD from Harvard University.
Alex Rives will join the EECS Department as an Assistant Professor in September, with principal memberships at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Rives’ research focuses on artificial intelligence enabling scientific understanding, discovery and design for biology. Rives worked with Meta as a graduate student at Up-to-date York University, where he founded and led an evolutionary-scale modeling team that developed immense protein language models. Rives earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and biology from Yale University and is completing a PhD in computer science at Up-to-date York University.
Sungo Shin in July he will start working at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering as an assistant professor. His research interests include control theory, optimization algorithms, high-performance computing and their applications in decision making in elaborate systems such as energy infrastructure. Shin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Argonne National Laboratory. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and chemical engineering from Seoul National University and a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Jessica Stark he started working at the Faculty 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 immunological discovery and immunotherapy. Previously, Stark was an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Cornell University and a PhD in chemical and biological engineering from Northwestern University.
Thomas John “TJ” Wallin he started working at the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering in January as an assistant professor. As a researcher, Wallin is interested in advanced functional gentle matter manufacturing, with a particular focus on gentle wearable technologies and their applications in human-computer interfaces. He was previously a Research Associate at Meta’s Reality Labs Research and worked on their Haptic Interactions team. Wallin earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and chemistry from the College of William and Mary and a master’s and doctorate in materials science and engineering from Cornell University.
Gioele Zardini he started working at the Faculty 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 collaborative design of sociotechnical systems, compositionality in engineering, applied category theory, decision and control, optimization and game theory, with society-critical applications to wise transportation systems, autonomy, and elaborate networks and infrastructure. He earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in mechanical engineering, with a focus on robotics, systems and controls, from ETH Zurich, followed by time at MIT, Stanford University and Motional.