Four faculty members receive 2025 Ruth and Joel Spira Awards
The awards are given annually to four faculty members in the areas of electrical engineering, computer science, mechanical engineering, and nuclear science and engineering to acknowledge “the tradition of high-quality engineering education at MIT”.
May 29, 2025
Four faculty members receive 2025 Ruth and Joel Spira Awards The recipients of the 2025 Ruth and Joel Spira Awards for Excellence in Teaching are Emilio Baglietto, Kaitlyn Becker, Jelena Notaros, and Jonathan Ragan-Kelley.
Emilio Baglietto is the Associate Department Head and Norman C. Rasmussen Professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. His research areas include turbulence modeling, unsteady flow phenomena, multiphase flow and boiling, and virtual reactor modeling.
Kaitlyn Becker is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Her research focuses on the intersection of design and manufacturing, co-developing mechanisms and the methods by which we make them.
Jelena Notaros is the Robert J. Shillman (1974) Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Her research focuses on
developing silicon-photonics-based platforms, devices, and systems for applications including augmented-reality displays, LiDAR sensing for autonomous vehicles, trapped-ion quantum engineering, free-space optical communications, and biophotonics.
Jonathan Ragan-Kelley is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His research focuses on high-efficiency computer graphics, at the intersection of graphics with systems, architecture, and compilers.