Maria Yang ’91, the William E. Leonhard (1940) Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been appointed vice provost for faculty at MIT, a role in which she will oversee programs and strategies to recruit and retain faculty members and support them throughout their careers.
Provost Anantha Chandrakasan announced Yang’s appointment, which is effective Feb. 16, in an email to MIT faculty and staff today.
“In the nearly two decades since Maria joined the MIT faculty, she has exemplified dedicated service to the Institute and deep interdisciplinary collaboration,” Chandrakasan wrote. He added that, in a series of leadership positions within the School of Engineering, Yang “consistently demonstrated her skill as a leader, her empathy as a colleague, and her values-driven decision-making.”
As vice provost for faculty, Yang will play a pivotal role in creating an environment where MIT’s faculty members are able to do their best work, “pursuing bold ideas with excellence and creativity,” according to Chandrakasan’s letter. She will partner with school and department leaders on faculty recruitment and retention, mentorship, and strategic planning, and she will oversee programs to support faculty members’ professional development at every stage of their careers.
“Part of what makes MIT unique is the way it provides faculty the room and the encouragement to do work that they think is important, impactful, and sometimes unexpected,” says Yang. “I think it’s vital to foster a culture and a sense of community that really enables our faculty to perform at their best — as researchers, of course, but also as educators and mentors, and as citizens of MIT.”
In addition to her role supporting MIT faculty, Yang will also handle oversight and planning responsibilities for campus academic and research spaces, in partnership with the Office of the Executive Vice President and Treasurer. She will also serve as the principal investigator for the National Science Foundation’s New England Innovation Corps Hub, oversee MIT Solve, and represent the provost on various boards and committees, such as MIT International and the Axim Collaborative.
Yang, who attended MIT as an undergraduate in mechanical engineering as part of the Class of 1991 before earning her master’s and PhD degrees from the design division of the mechanical engineering department at Stanford University, returned to MIT in 2007 as an assistant professor. She has held a number of leadership positions at MIT, including associate dean, deputy dean, and interim dean of the School of Engineering.
In 2021, Yang co-chaired an Institute-wide committee on the future of design, which recommended the creation of a center to support design opportunities at MIT. Through a generous gift from the Morningside Foundation, the recommendation came to life as the interdisciplinary Morningside Academy for Design (MAD), where Yang has served as associate director since inception. Yang has been instrumental in the development of several new programs at MAD, including design-focused graduate fellowships open to students across MIT and a new design-themed first-year learning community.
Since 2017, Yang has also served as academic faculty director for MIT D-Lab, which uses participatory design to collaborate with communities around the world on the development of solutions to poverty challenges. And since 2024, Yang has served as a co-chair of the SHASS+ Connectivity Fund, which funds research projects in which scholars in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences collaborate with faculty colleagues from other schools at MIT.
Given Yang’s extensive track record of working across disciplinary lines, Chandrakasan said in his letter that he had “no doubt that in her new role she will be an effective and trusted champion for colleagues across the Institute.”
An internationally recognized leader in design theory and methodology, Yang is currently focused on researching the early-stage processes used to create successful designs for everything from consumer products to complex, large-scale engineering systems, and the role that these early-stage processes play in determining design outcomes.
Yang, a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), received the 2024 ASME Design Theory and Methodology Award, recognizing “sustained and meritorious contributions” in the field. She has also been recognized with a National Science Foundation CAREER award and the American Society of Engineering Education Fred Merryfield Design Award. In 2017 Yang was named a MacVicar Faculty Fellow, one of MIT’s highest teaching honors.
Yang succeeds Institute Professor Paula Hammond, who served in the role from 2023 before being named dean of the School of Engineering, a role she assumed in January.
