Chandrakasan Named MIT’s Chief Innovation And Strategy Officer

Photo: @MIT

India-West Staff Reporter

BOSTON, MA – Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has been named MIT’s first chief innovation and strategy officer, effective immediately. He will continue to serve as dean of engineering, a role he has held since 2017, the university announced.

As chief innovation and strategy officer, Chandrakasan will work closely with MIT President Sally Kornbluth to advance the ambitious agenda that she has laid out in the first year of her presidency. He will collaborate with key stakeholders across MIT, as well as external partners, to launch initiatives and new collaborations in support of these strategic priorities.

Chandrakasan will help develop and implement plans to advance research, education, and innovation in areas that Kornbluth has identified as her top priorities — such as climate change and sustainability, artificial intelligence, and the life sciences. He will also play a leading role in efforts to secure the resources needed for MIT researchers to pursue bold work in these key areas.

As dean of engineering since 2017, Chandrakasan has implemented a variety of interdisciplinary programs, creating new models for how academia and industry can work together to accelerate the pace of research. This has resulted in the launch of initiatives including the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, the MIT-Takeda Program, the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative, the MIT Mobility Initiative, the MIT Quest for Intelligence, the MIT AI Hardware Program, the MIT-Northpond Program, the MIT Faculty Founder Initiative, and the MIT-Novo Nordisk Artificial Intelligence Postdoctoral Fellows Program.

Chandrakasan has also played a role as dean in establishing a variety of initiatives beyond the School of Engineering. He was instrumental in the 2018 founding of the Schwarzman College of Computing, the most significant structural change to MIT in nearly 70 years.

Chandrakasan has also played a role in establishing the Daniel J. Riccio Graduate Engineering Leadership Program.

Prior to becoming dean in 2017, Chandrakasan served for six years as head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT’s largest academic department.