Launching leadership search for MIT Life Sciences & Health Collaborative

Dear colleagues,

We write today to share key updates about the MIT Life Sciences and Health Collaborative, including the launch of a faculty search advisory group responsible for recommending candidates to lead this critical effort.

Establishing a vision for life sciences and health at MIT

President Kornbluth noted in her recent message about high-level themes and priorities plans to further strengthen MIT's impact at the forefront of life sciences and health discovery and innovation.

With the goal of delivering high-impact solutions, the collaborative will spur interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of engineering, science, computing and AI, economics, business, policy, design and the built environment, and the humanities. The collaborative will catalyze new partnerships between MIT and sector-leading hospitals and industries, and provide essential support for faculty, students, postdocs, and staff working in these areas. It is inspired by VITALS, the “Vision to Integrate, Advance, and Translate the Life Sciences at MIT” report produced by the working group co-chaired by Professors Kristala Prather and Tyler Jacks.

The collaborative will be part of the Chief Innovation and Strategy Office and consist of the following three elements:

• The Foundation: New core support will build postdoc and student talent pipelines; expand grant writing assistance; launch MIT-hosted seminars and annual symposia; and bring innovations to market more rapidly.
• Faculty-Led Cross-Cutting Seed Programs: New seed programs bolstered by Institute and philanthropic funds will support collaborations among 5–10 faculty members in areas they propose. Potential focus areas include women’s health, AI, neuroscience and mental health, environmental life sciences, the future of healthcare, and more.
• Industry and Philanthropic Initiatives: New programs and centers to accelerate work in the life sciences and health will be strengthened by ongoing industry and philanthropic funding.

Launching a leadership search

Now that the collaborative has received strong support from MIT’s school and college councils, a search advisory group will begin to identify faculty candidates to lead this new initiative. We are grateful to Professor Matthew Vander Heiden for agreeing to serve as the group’s chair and to all the members, whose names are listed below, for lending us their expertise on this critical appointment.

If you would like to be considered for the collaborative’s director role, please submit your CV and statement of interest to mlshc@mit.edu by Friday, November 1. You can also use this address to nominate a colleague for the position or to share your thoughts about the search. Your submissions will be treated as confidential.

The search advisory group will recommend a short list of candidates to the president in the coming weeks.

We hope to be able to announce the leader of the collaborative around the same time as the Life Sciences and Health symposium – an event planned for December 4 to showcase MIT life sciences and health innovations. Look for upcoming announcements about the event that is being planned by Professors Amy Keating and Katharina Ribbeck, co-chairs of the event planning committee.

We are excited about the growing momentum around this collaborative and look forward to sharing more on our progress in the coming weeks.

Sincerely,

Cynthia Barnhart
Provost

Anantha Chandrakasan
Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer
Dean, School of Engineering

Nergis Mavalvala
Dean, School of Science

Search Advisory Group Members

Matthew Vander Heiden (chair), Lester Wolfe (1919) Professor of Molecular Biology and Director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research

Mariana Arcaya, Germeshausen Professor of Urban Planning and Public Health

Angela Belcher, James Mason Crafts Professor of Biological Engineering and Materials Science

Dimitris Bertsimas, Boeing Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management and Vice Provost for Open Learning

Emery N. Brown, Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience

Amy E. Keating, Jay A. Stein (1968) Professor of Biology, Professor of Biological Engineering, and Biology Department Head

Laura L. Kiessling, Novartis Professor of Chemistry

Sendhil Mullainathan, Peter de Florez Professor, Professor of EECS; Professor of Economics, Dual Appointment [AI+D]

Giovanni Traverso, Karl Van Tassel (1925) Career Development Professor, Mechanical Engineering