Bhaskar Pant is the executive director of MIT Professional education, the branch of MIT that provides technology professionals access to MIT knowledge. Under his direction, the MIT Professional Education offering has grown considerably, as have corporate relationships and its global reach, as professionals from more than 120 different countries participate in the classroom, internationals and, recently, also in those launched in online and mixed formats. The courses, which cover such cutting-edge areas as big data, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT), combined with other professional development courses in the fields of innovation and entrepreneurship, have benefited thousands of professionals worldwide.

Mr. Pant was part of the “The Future of Education at MIT” team, created by the MIT President, and contributed specifically to the work of the subcommittee that was responsible for “opening the doors of MIT to the world”. Building on Mr. Pant’s initiative, whose objective was to expand globally, MIT Professional Education offers short programs in an increasing number of regions in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe. Prior to joining MIT, Mr. Pant held important leadership positions in education and corporate companies around the world.

PROGRAMS: Cultural Awareness

Dr. Anthony is director of the MIT Master of Engineering in Manufacturing Program, co-director of the Medical Electronic Device Realization Center and deputy director of the MIT Skoltech Initiative. He possesses more than 20 years of product realization experience and has won an Emmy from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his innovations in broadcast technology. Dr. Anthony designs instruments and techniques to monitor and control physical systems. His work involves the analysis and the design of systems. He also uses mechanical, electrical and optical engineering as well as computer science and optimization to develop solutions.

Dr. Anthony´s research revolves around the design of instruments and techniques for measuring and controlling complex physical systems and includes the development of instruments and measurement solutions for manufacturing, medical diagnostics, and imaging diagnostics. In addition to his academic work, he has extensive experience in market-driven technological innovation, product development and entrepreneurship, and marketing at the point where information technology and advanced manufacturing come into contact. As a teacher, his main interests are the modeling of large-scale systems in a variety of areas involving decision making and the development of optimization algorithms and software useful for analyzing and designing these types of systems. He is an expert in market-driven technological innovations, as well as in entrepreneurship.

PROGRAMS: Beyond IoT · Smart Manufacturing

Olivier de Weck was born in Switzerland and has a degree in industrial engineering from the ETH Zurich and in aerospace systems engineering from MIT. Prior to joining MIT, he was an engineering liaison and later director of the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 aircraft engineering program.

Professor De Weck is a leader in systems engineering research. He focuses on the design of complex man-made systems, such as aircraft, spacecraft, cars, printers and critical infrastructure, and on their evolution. His main focus is on strategic properties that have the potential to maximize life cycle value. Since 2001, his group has developed new methods and quantitative tools that explicitly consider production, flexibility, common features and sustainability, among other characteristics. Professor De Weck’s teaching emphasizes excellence, innovation, and the combination of theory and practice.

PROGRAMS: Designing Product Families

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.

PROGRAMS: Digital Transformation · Cloud & DevOps · Blockchain

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.

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.

PROGRAMS: Digital Transformation · Cloud & DevOps · Blockchain