Dr. Neal Connors is the founder and a consultant at Phoenix BioConsulting, LLC. His industrial microbiology experience is diverse: bioprocess development for renewable chemicals, fermentation and strain improvement for the production of anti-bacterial and anti-fungal natural products (e.g. Cancidas®), heterologous protein production using microbial fermentation or mammalian cell culture, whole-cell biocatalysis for the production of chiral intermediates.
Kristala Jones Prather is the Arthur D. Little Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and an investigator in the multi-institutional Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC) funded by the National Science Foundation (USA). Professor Prather has co-authored more than 75 manuscripts and two book chapters, and has five issued patents with several additional applications pending.
Director Emeritus Daniel I.C. Wang was the Institute Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. He was the recipient of numerous awards from the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and from schools here and abroad.
Asegun Henry is the Noyce Career Development Chair Associate Professor in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include novel energy system concepts that help to mitigate the effects of climate change, including solar energy, energy storage, and transportation.
Charles L. Cooney is Robert T. Haslam Professor Emeritus in the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering. He serves as a consultant to and/or director of a number of biotech and pharmaceutical companies and is on several boards of professional journals.
Carlo Ratti is a Professor of Urban Technologies and Planning Director of the MIT SENSEable City Lab. In the last decade, Carlo has given talks around the world on the theme of Smart Cities, while his work has been exhibited in international venues including the Venice Biennale, New York’s MoMA, London’s Science Museum and Barcelona’s Design Museum.
Steven B. Leeb currently serves as Professor in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering. Prof. Leeb is concerned with the design, analysis, development, and maintenance processes for all kinds of machinery with electrical actuators, sensors, or power electronic drives. He is particularly interested in the study of mechatronics.
James L. Kirtley Jr. is a Professor Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at MIT. Prof. Kirtley is a specialist in electric machinery and power systems engineering. He has participated in broadly-based research and development in several related areas, including superconducting electric machinery, conventional turbogenerators, large machinery for ship propulsion, monitoring of electric power systems and equipment, magnetic bearings and magnetic levitation and design of electric machinery.
David Martinez is a Laboratory Fellow in the Cyber Security and Information Sciences Division at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and MIT Instructor. He focuses on research and technical directions in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing. Previously, Mr. Martinez served as an Associate Head in the Cyber Security and Information Sciences Division. He was also a member of Lincoln Laboratory’s Steering Committee.
Mr. Martinez has held many past technical leadership roles, including Leader of the Embedded Digital Systems Group and Head of the ISR Systems and Technology Division. Mr. Martinez also served in a leadership role as President and Chairman of Mercury Federal Systems. Prior to joining Lincoln Laboratory, he was employed as a principal research engineer at ARCO Oil and Gas Company, specializing in adaptive seismic signal processing. He received the ARCO special achievement award. He holds three U.S. patents based on his work in signal processing for seismic applications. He was elected an IEEE Fellow “for technical leadership in the development of high-performance embedded computing for real-time defense systems.”
In 2008, he and his co-authors released a successful book titled High Performance Embedded Computing Handbook, which is highly referenced within the embedded computing research community. Recently, Mr. Martinez co-authored the book Artificial Intelligence: A Systems Approach from Architecture Principles to Deployment. This book is used in his MIT course called “AI System Architecture and Large Language Model Applications.”
Mr. Martinez was awarded a bachelor’s degree from New Mexico State University, an MS degree from MIT, and the EE degree jointly from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Electrical Engineering and Oceanographic Engineering. He completed an MBA from the Southern Methodist University.
Jim Magarian is an Engineering Leadership Instructor on the Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program staff. He joins the program staff after more than nine years in industry as an engineering manager and mechanical engineer in the aerospace/defense sector.
