Hamsa Balakrishnan, the William E. Leonhard (1940) Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro) at MIT, has been appointed associate dean of the MIT School of Engineering effective Aug. 1.

As associate dean, Balakrishnan will focus on efforts to attract, retain, and support top talent across all academic levels in the School of Engineering. She will help lead and shape various faculty-focused programs and will help manage many of the school’s student-facing programs and initiatives. Balakrishnan will also support both faculty and students across the school with regards to fellowships, awards, and honors. Additionally, she will support and contribute to a number of key groups within the school.

“Professor Balakrishnan’s passion and dedication have already made a lasting impact on the School of Engineering. Through leadership roles in AeroAstro and beyond, she has demonstrated a commitment to supporting and uplifting our students, faculty, and staff. I am delighted to welcome her to the School of Engineering faculty leadership team,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, chief innovation and strategy officer, dean of the School of Engineering, and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

As principal investigator of the Dynamics, Infrastructure Networks, and Mobility (DINaMo) group, Balakrishnan and her team research the modeling, analysis, control, and optimization of modern infrastructure systems. They have collaborated with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, NASA, and major airports to address challenges such as advanced air mobility, air traffic congestion, and airport operations.

Balakrishnan served as associate department head in AeroAstro from 2018 to 2021. In that role, she was responsible for the undergraduate and graduate education programs in the department. During her tenure as associate department head, she restructured graduate student recruiting through the use of multi-year fellowships, coordinated the mid-semester shift to remote instruction in March 2020, and introduced a first-of-its-kind provisional funding program for PhD students who wished to change research groups.

Balakrishnan also served as director of Transportation@MIT in 2018-19. During this time, she managed the interdepartmental graduate programs in transportation that span the schools of Engineering and Architecture and Planning, focusing on improving faculty engagement and student recruiting to the program.

In addition to her roles at MIT, Balakrishnan co-founded Lumo, which uses data and analytics to predict flight delays. She currently serves as the company’s chief scientist.

Over the course of her career, Balakrishnan has received numerous honors and accolades for both her research contributions and her dedication as an educator. In addition to being named an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), she has been honored with an NSF CAREER Award, the inaugural CNA Award for Operational Analysis, AIAA’s Lawrence Sperry Award, and the American Automatic Control Council’s Donald P. Eckman Award. She has also been recognized for her mentorship and support of students with a Committed to Caring Award, the MIT AIAA Undergraduate Teaching Award, and the MIT AIAA Undergraduate Advising Award.

Balakrishnan received her bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras, and her master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford University. Before joining MIT, she served as a principal development engineer at the University Affiliated Research Center at the University of California Santa Cruz and NASA Ames Research Center's Terminal Air Traffic Management Concepts Branch.

Balakrishnan succeeds Elsa Olivetti, the Jerry McAfee Professor in Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, who has served as associate dean of engineering since Sept. 1, 2023 and was recently named an MIT Climate Project mission director. Olivetti will continue in her role as associate dean until the end of August.

“I’m grateful to Professor Olivetti for her tremendous dedication to the School of Engineering. Her contributions to the school’s leadership team were substantial. I’m thrilled that the MIT Climate Project will benefit from her passion and expertise,” adds Chandrakasan. 

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