Our Team

John Gabrieli is the director of the Athinoula A. Martinos Imaging Center at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. He is an Investigator at the Institute, leading the Gabrieli Laboratory, with faculty appointments in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, where he holds the Grover Hermann Professorship.

Parag A. Pathak is the Jane Berkowitz Carlton and Dennis William Carlton Professor of Microeconomics at MIT, founding co-director of the NBER Working Group on Market Design, and founder of MIT's School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative (SEII), a laboratory focused on education, human capital, and the income distribution. Parag is also the recent recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal. 

Angrist's research interests include the economics of education and school reform; social programs and the labor market; the effects of immigration, labor market regulation and institutions; and econometric methods for program and policy evaluation. He is the 2021 recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. 

Cynthia Breazeal is the dean for digital learning at MIT. As dean, she leverages her experience in emerging digital technologies and business, research, and strategic initiatives to lead Open Learning’s business and engagement units. Breazeal heads Open Learning’s corporate education efforts, including xPRO, Bootcamps, and Horizon, helping to grow the existing portfolio of online professional courses, content libraries, and bootcamps, while looking more holistically at the needs of companies and professionals to identify areas of convergence and innovation. 

Dr. Chris Caplice, Silver Family Research Fellow and Executive Director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) is currently researching ways to turn 'zombie' online learners into learners with discipline by introducing interventions into online classes. 

For over 20 years Professor Duflo has been working on evaluating social policies to find effective and tested interventions to improve the lives of the poor. She has received numerous academic awards for her work, most notably the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. 

Kyle Keane holds a joint appointment as a Lecturer and Research Scientist in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering where he created the Interactive Materials Education Laboratory (IMEL) to develop and validate methods of making education more socially, physically, and intellectually reciprocal for learners.

Eric's work uses a Design Based Research methodology to span the educational technology ecosystem, from design and development of new technologies to professional development and implementation.

Pattie Maes is a professor in MIT's Program in Media Arts and Sciences. She runs the Media  Lab's Fluid Interfaces research group, which aims to radically reinvent the human-machine experience. Coming from a background in artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction, she is particularly interested in the topic of cognitive enhancement, or how immersive and wearable systems can actively assist people with memory, attention, learning, decision making, communication, and wellbeing. 

Dr. Admir Masic is the Founder and Faculty Director of the MIT Refugee Action Hub (ReACT). Driven by his own personal experience as a teenage refugee from Bosnia Herzegovina, Masic knows firsthand that a good education is the ticket to a better life, “knowledge is something no one can ever take from me.” 

Stefanie Mueller is an assistant professor in the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) department and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Her research includes adaptive learning tools for shaping the future of education. 

Hae Won Park is a Research Scientist at the Personal Robots Group at MIT Media Lab. Hae Won’s work focuses on developing interactive social machines that deeply personalize to their users over a long-term interaction, attending to each individual’s unique needs and goals including learning, emotional and social well-being. 

Dr. Ponce is the Executive Director of the Supply Chain Management MITx MicroMasters Program as well as a Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics. Dr. Ponce and her team at MIT are currently researching ways to introduce interventions into online learning that will keep learners interested and engaged throughout the full online course.

Pawan Sinha is a professor of vision and computational neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. His current research focuses on the insertion of novel video clips into online learning to stimulate engagement. 

eheying@mit.edu

Eryn Heying is the Executive Director of the MIT Blueprint Labs, a research effort that seeks to evaluate and improve education policies and programs. She brings experience in education, research, and nonprofit management to her role at MIT.

smnelson@mit.edu

Steve Nelson, Senior Manager for the MIT Integrated Learning Initiative, is passionate about education and learning, having spent the last few years working to improve workplace learning in the corporate world, he is now focused on helping find research solutions to solve education issues from pK-12 to higher education to workplace learning. Steve works with research partners on the campus of MIT to facilitate transformational learning objectives and create educational best practices.

Rita Sahu is the Acting Program Director for the Academic Wellness Initiative (an Initiative within MITili). The Initiative’s goal is to collaborate across research projects that impact or are impacted by learning.