Indian American Anantha Chandrakasan Named MIT’s First Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer
- The engineering and computer science professor will continue to serve as dean of engineering, a role he was appointed to in 2017.
Professor Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has been named the university’s first chief innovation and strategy officer, effective immediately. He will continue to serve as dean of engineering, according to a MIT news release.
In his new role, Chandrakasan will work closely with MIT President Sally Kornbluth to “help develop and implement plans to advance research, education, and innovation,” MIT said. He will additionally “collaborate with key stakeholders across MIT, as well as external partners,” and 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,” the news release said. He 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. He also has served in leadership roles on MIT Fast Forward, an Institute-wide plan for addressing climate change; as the inaugural chair of the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health; and as the co-chair of the academic workstream for MIT’s Task Force 2021.
Before becoming dean, he served for six years as head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), MIT’s largest academic department. As department head, he led the development of initiatives that continue to have an impact across MIT. He created Rising Stars in EECS, an academic career workshop that rotates amongst various universities and has become a model for similar efforts in other disciplines. Under his leadership, EECS also launched the SuperUROP program as well as Start6, which has since become StartMIT, a program supporting students interested in entrepreneurship. He currently lives in Belmont, Massachusetts, with his wife and three children.