Laura M. Robinson, formerly executive director of Engineering Special Programs, has migrated to the Sloan School of Management, where she has been appointed director of the Management of Technology Program.
The MOT Program, a joint venture between Sloan and the School of Engineering, prepares professionals with significant technical experience for positions of leadership within their organizations. The program teaches strategies for managing the global development, acquisition and commercialization of technology.
After receiving the SB from MIT in materials science and engineering (1980) and the MBA from the Wharton School, she worked for 10 years as a market research manager in the pharmaceutical and health-care industry. "Having learned technology management through hard experience, I'm really excited to be involved in a program that imparts this kind of knowledge systematically," she said.
Ms. Robinson plans to broaden the MOT Program to include more executives in industries such as high tech, biotechnology, financial services and telecommunications. She also hopes to expose MOT students to research in areas such as artificial intelligence, financial engineering and product design.
The MOT Program provides more than 50 technical executives from the United States and international corporations with 12 months of study in areas such as the strategic management of technology, managerial finance, and managing innovation and technological change. The program, co-chaired by Edward Roberts, the David Sarnoff Professor of Management of Technology, and Professor of Management James Utterback, grants a special-degree MS in the management of technology.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 10, 1997.
