Duane S. Boning has been named engineering faculty co-director of the Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program, effective Sept. 1.
“Professor Boning’s distinguished record of teaching and service to MIT makes him uniquely qualified to lead this important program,” Dean Ian A. Waitz wrote in an email to LGO-affiliated faculty and industry partners earlier today. “I have worked closely with Duane on a range of projects, and he is always a thoughtful, diligent, and energetic partner. The LGO program will continue to thrive under his direction.”
Founded in 1988 as the Leaders for Manufacturing (LFM) program, LGO is a dual-degree program run as a collaboration between the MIT School of Engineering and the MIT Sloan School of Management. Its two-year curriculum features internships at elite partner companies that are all leaders in their industries. Students develop leadership skills for the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, geosciences, energy, high-tech, and global supply chain industries. Boning, who is the Clarence J. LeBel Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), has deep connections with LGO, having co-advised more than 40 student theses with the program.
Boning’s research focuses on manufacturing and design, with emphasis on statistical modeling, control, and variation reduction in semiconductor, microelectromechanical, photonic, and nanomanufacturing processes. He is a recognized leader in the characterization and modeling of spatial variation in integrated circuit and nanofabrication processes, including plasma etch and chemical-mechanical polishing. The tools developed in his group have been commercialized and widely adopted in industry. His recent work is in developing and applying statistical and machine learning methods to model and reduce variation in emerging technologies, including integrated silicon photonics, nanoimprint processes, and biomedical electronics. He served as editor in chief for the IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing from 2001 to 2011 and was named a fellow of the IEEE for contributions to modeling and control in semiconductor manufacturing in 2005.
Boning’s teaching has been recognized at both the undergraduate and graduate level. He is active as a recitation and laboratory instructor, and as a formal and informal advisor to MIT students at all levels. He helped redesign the undergraduate curriculum in electrical engineering and has created a number of new classes, at both the undergraduate and graduate level. He is a past recipient of the Ruth and Joel Spira Teaching Award, he won the Best Advisor Award from the MIT ACM/IEEE student organization in 2012, and was the 2016 recipient of the Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising in the School of Engineering.
Boning has an especially lengthy and distinguished record of service to MIT, with a particular emphasis on international engagements. Since 2011, he has served as the director for the MIT/Masdar Institute Cooperative Program, for which he has worked to help establish a new graduate university in Abu Dhabi, where he has fostered many joint research, education, and outreach activities between MIT and Masdar Institute faculty and students. From 2011 to 2013 he served as founding faculty lead in the MIT Skoltech Initiative, working to conceive and launch a new graduate university, the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) outside Moscow, Russia. And from 2003 to 2004 he served as co-director for undergraduate education in the Cambridge-MIT Institute, fostering a number of undergraduate education research efforts.
Currently associate director of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories, where he oversees the information technology and computer-aided design services organization, Boning also served from 2004 to 2011 as associate head of EECS, where he helped implement a new undergraduate curriculum. He is also a former chair of the Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid, and chair of the Committee on the Undergraduate Program.
Boning received BS degrees in electrical engineering and in computer science from MIT in 1984. He went on to earn an MS and a PhD, both also from MIT, in 1986 and 1991, respectively. An National Science Foundtion Fellow from 1984 to 1989 and an Intel Graduate Fellow in 1990, Boning worked on semiconductor process representation, process/device simulation tool integration, and statistical modeling and optimization at the Texas Instruments semiconductor process and design center in Dallas, Texas, from 1991 to 93. He joined the faculty at MIT in 1992.
Boning succeeds David Simchi-Levi, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and of engineering sytems. Simchi-Levi served as faculty co-director of the LGO program through the change of its name and strategy in 2009. He was also instrumental in launching the China LGO program at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2006, helped the program reach a historic high of industrial partners (now 26), and recently helped to create a supply chain track for LGO within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
