David Niño is a Senior Lecturer in MIT’s Daniel J. Riccio Graduate Program in Engineering Leadership. He had served in this role since 2015 when he launched this program to provide academic leadership education for MIT graduate students in engineering and other disciplines. Under his leadership, the program has grown from one graduate class to a variety of highly-rated academic courses and workshops that educate over 200 graduate students annually. David received a School of Engineering “Infinite Mile Award” for his work in establishing this program, which received a $10 million gift of support in 2022.
David consults with technology executives on topics related to developing leadership among engineers, researchers, and other technical experts. He has published on organizational culture, ethics, engineering leadership, and developing management and leadership skills. David holds a Ph.D. in Management from the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his B.A., B.B.A., and M.A. degrees. He lives in Weston, Massachusetts, with his wife and three children.

Dr. Sanchez is the architect of the global network “The Internet of Things” and data analysis platforms for SAP, Ford, Johnson & Johnson, Accenture, Shell, Exxon Mobil and Altria. In cyber security, he has developed cyber-attack impact analyses for the U.S. Department of Defense and a password firewall for the IARPA.

Dr. Abel Sanchez holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and teaches MIT courses in cyber security, engineering, blockchain and data science. He has been involved in developing educational software for Microsoft and establishing the Accenture Technology Academy. He has produced over 150 educational videos, has 10 years of experience with learning management systems and has made deployments in the Americas, Asia and Europe.

Devavrat Shah is an Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and the faculty director of the MicroMasters in Statistics and Data Science program with the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. He also is a member of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) and the Operations Research Center (ORC) at MIT. He currently directs the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT.

His current research interest is in developing large-scale machine learning algorithms for unstructured data, with particular interest in social data. He has made contributions to the development of “gossip” protocols and “message-passing” algorithms for statistical inference that have been pillars of modern distributed data processing systems.

He cofounded Celect, Inc., which has been part of Nike since 2019. In 2019, he cofounded Ikigai Labs with the mission of building self-driving organizations by empowering data business operators to make data-driven decisions with the ease of spreadsheets.

His work has been covered in popular press including The New York Times, Forbes, and Wired, and he has written several award-winning papers in machine learning, operations research, and computer science. He has also been awarded the 2010 Erlang prize from the INFORMS Applied Probability Society.

De Weck is a leader in systems engineering research. His focus is on how complex human-made systems such as aircraft, spacecraft, automobiles, printers, and critical infrastructures are designed and how they evolve over time. His main emphasis is on strategic properties that have the potential to maximize lifecycle value and minimize planned obsolescence.

Since 2001, de Weck’s group has developed original quantitative methods and tools that explicitly consider manufacturability, flexibility, commonality, and sustainability, among other characteristics. De Weck’s teaching emphasizes excellence, innovation, and the irrefutable bridge between theory and practice.

• De Weck holds a degree in industrial engineering from ETH Zurich and an M.S. in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT.
• He earned his Ph.D. in aerospace systems from MIT.
• De Weck was an engineering program manager on the F/A-18 aircraft program at McDonnell Douglas.

Professor John R. Williams’ research focuses on the development and application of computing algorithms in distributed cyberphysical systems. He was director of the Auto-ID Laboratory, where the Internet of Things was invented. He is considered, along with Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, one of the 50 most powerful people in “Computer Networks”.

He is author and coauthor of more than 250 articles in journals and conferences. Professor Williams teaches courses on the basics of programming, modern software development, the architecture of web, cloud and blockchain systems. In addition, he holds a BSc in Physics from Oxford University, an MSc in Physics from UCLA, and a PhD from the University of Swansea.