CAMBRIDGE, MA— Prof. Hamsa Balakrishnan this summer was appointed Associate Dean of the School of Engineering at MIT, where she focuses on efforts to attract, retain, and support top talent across all academic levels in the School of Engineering.
“I stumbled on a choice of career that I love, so I think even with the benefit of hindsight, I would have picked this one,” says Prof. Balakrishnan, the William E. Leonhard (1940) Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT.
On Nov. 15, 2024, Prof. Balakrishnan will be honored with the “Academia and Innovation Award” for 2024 at the New England Choice Awards Gala at the Burlington Marriott Hotel in Burlington, MA. The event will be attended by over 400 business and community leaders, academics, philanthropists and medical and technology professionals. To buy a ticket for the gala, please click here.
As associate dean, Prof. Balakrishnan will help lead and shape various faculty-focused programs and will help manage many of the school’s student-facing programs and initiatives at MIT. She will also support both faculty and students across the School of Engineering with regards to fellowships, awards, and honors. Additionally, she will support and contribute to several key groups within the school.
Before joining MIT, she was at the NASA Ames Research Center, after receiving her PhD from Stanford University and a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
Her research is in the design, analysis, and implementation of control and optimization algorithms for cyber-physical infrastructures, with an emphasis on air transportation. Her contributions include airport congestion control algorithms, air traffic routing and airspace resource allocation methods, machine learning for weather forecasts and flight delay prediction, algorithms for autonomous and advanced air mobility operations, and methods to mitigate the environmental impacts of air transportation.
Prof. Balakrishnan is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award (2008), the CNA Award for Operational Analysis (2012), the AIAA Lawrence Sperry Award (2012), the American Automatic Control Council’s Donald P. Eckman Award (2014), the MIT AIAA Undergrad Advising (2014) and Undergraduate Teaching (2019) Awards, the MIT Office of Graduate Education Committed to Caring Honor (2023), and several best paper awards including the Kevin Corker Award for Best Paper at the FAA and Eurocontrol co-organized USA/Europe Air Traffic Management R&D Seminar (2011, 2021 and 2023).
Here is a brief Q/A with Prof. Balakrishnan:
INDIA New England News: Who has influenced you most in your personal and professional life?
Hamsa Balakrishnan: I have been very fortunate to have had strong role models to inspire me both in my personal and professional life –starting with growing up with my paternal great grandmother and grandmother (who went to the same elementary and high school as I did), and my mother, a theoretical physicist, who set an example for me as a woman in academia and in STEM when I was growing up and continues to inspire me to this day.
INE: Your three favorite books?
HB: There are so many. I grew up reading a lot of P.G. Wodehouse that I love; I really enjoy short stories (the translated short stories of the Tamil writer Kalki are a favorite; and the Pinball Effect by James Burke blends discovery with trivia, two topics that I enjoy reading about.
INE: Your hobby?
HB: I listen to music and like doing crosswords and other word puzzles.
INE: Why do you do what you do?
HB: I enjoy collaborating to solve problems, and research gives me a creative outlet to do that with great students and colleagues. I also love teaching, and academia gives me that opportunity. Aerospace is currently experiencing a resurgence and is an interdisciplinary field.
Finally, MIT in particular is a place where there are so many motivated people and wonderful students who want to work together to solve some of the most challenging problems facing the world, and I am lucky to be part of that.
INE: If you get a second chance, what will you chose as your new career and why?
HB: I stumbled on a choice of career that I love, so I think even with the benefit of hindsight, I would have picked this one.
