Dear members of the MIT community,
This is my first opportunity to speak with you through The Infinite, our new monthly newsletter. I would like to begin by asking for your active collaboration over the coming months in the development of a shared vision for the School of Engineering.
Our faculty, alumni, and students infuse society with the positive and practical benefits of their knowledge, ideas, and discoveries. Today we are preparing a new generation of engineers to lead and innovate in an era of increasing technological and social complexity and opportunity.
Please join us in formulating strategic priorities in areas such as diversity and inclusion, supporting and amplifying the impact of research, broadening our educational initiatives and approaches, establishing collaborations with the other schools at MIT and beyond, enhancing our community experience, and building on our culture of scholarship, leadership, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
Given that we lead by preparing our students to go out and make a better world, in MIT style we also never stop seeking answers to the question: how do we best educate our students to do that? Our new associate dean Peko Hosoi, the Neil and Jane Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and a MacVicar Faculty Fellow, is deeply committed to addressing that question with rigor and action. While serving as associate department head in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Peko created and managed a range of educational activities for undergraduate programs, and recently championed the New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) initiative in the School, which uses novel pedagogical approaches to modernize curriculum in emerging fields.
In a world of rapidly evolving technology, engineers of the future must collaborate in order to lead. The Institute recently launched the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab, one of the largest university-industry collaborations to date. IBM will invest $240 million to mobilize the talent of scientists, professors, and students to pursue joint research. We hope to use this new lab as a template for many other interactions with industry.
I welcome your thoughts on the current state of engineering and on our strategic priorities for the School, and I look forward to working with you.
Sincerely,
