Awards, honors and fellowships

Venti Technologies – a company co-founded by MIT researchers and alumni – has been named one of the most innovative companies in the Asia-Pacific region for Fast Company’s 2025 roundup of top companies, reports Katerina Barton. The company focuses “on autonomous technologies for industrial use—specifically in low-speed environments like ports, airports, and warehouses,” explains Barton. “The company’s suite of special-purpose algorithms is designed to optimize cargo container transportation and works with a wide range of vehicles, allowing the AI-enabled technology to move varying weight loads and distances through complex spaces and changing routes.” 

Diane Hoskins '79, a member of the MIT Corporation, has been named a CNBC Changemaker for her impact on the business world, reports Ian Thomas for CNBC. “Over her more than three-decade career at Gensler, she has risen up the firm’s ranks to now serve as its global co-chair alongside Andy Cohen, who Hoskins shares long-term strategy and day-to-day operations with and previously served as co-CEO with for nearly two decades,” writes Thomas. “Hoskins has also been at the center of the discussion around how workspace design intersects with employee performance and engagement, overseeing Gensler’s Workplace Survey and influencing how the industry at large designs offices and other spaces.” 

Prof. Sarah Millholland, Prof. Christian Wolf, Prof. Emil Verner, Prof. Darcy McRose, Prof. Marzyeh Ghassemi, Prof. Mohsen Ghaffari and Prof. Ariel Furst have received the 2025 Sloan Research Fellowship for “being among the most promising scientific researchers currently working in their fields,” reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes. “Sloan Research Fellows are chosen in seven scientific and technical fields—chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics,” explains Nietzel. 

Steve Mann PhD '97 has been awarded the IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award for his contributions toward the development of virtual reality, augmented reality, wearable technology, eXtended Reality products and services, reports Thomas Coughlin for Forbes. “Widely regarded as ‘the father of wearable computing,’” Mann “invented, designed, and built the world’s first smartwatch capable of downloading and running a wide variety of apps for health, well-being, and fitness tracking, ushering in a new era of personal health,” explains Coughlin. 

MIT Profs. Angela Belcher, Emery Brown, Paula Hammond and Feng Zhang have been honored with National Medals of Science and Technology, reports Michael T. Neitzel for Forbes. Additionally, R. Lawrence Edwards '76 received a National Medal of Science and Noubar Afeyan PhD '87, a member of the MIT Corporation, accepted a National Medal on behalf of Moderna. The recipients have been awarded “the nation’s highest honors for exemplary achievements and leadership in science and technology,” explains Neitzel. 

Lisa Su '90, SM '91, PhD '94, chair and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), has been named Time’s 2024 CEO of the Year, reports Orianna Rosa Royle for Fortune. In 2012, Su joined “AMD as senior vice president and general manager of the company’s global business units,” writes Royle. “Just two years later she was promoted to AMD’s CEO becoming the first woman to hold to role since the company’s founding in 1969.”

Lisa Su '90, SM '91, PhD '94, chair and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, has been named Time’s CEO of the Year, reports Morgan Smith for CNBC. “Su is one of few Fortune 500 CEOs with a PhD,” explains Smith. “Her engineering background helped her spearhead some of the technological innovations — including a new faster CPU chip for computers — that drove AMD’s recent success.” 

Prof. Daron Acemoglu, one of the recipients of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics, speaks with NPR Planet Money hosts Jeff Guo and Greg Rosalsky about the academic inspirations that led to his award-winning research studying the role of institutions in shaping economies. “In 1980, as I was in middle school, just the beginning of my seventh grade, Turkey suffered a big military coup,” explains Acemoglu. “There were soldiers everywhere, including in our school. Turkey was definitely not a democratic country at the time, and it was also suffering via a series of economic problems. I got interested in exactly these sets of issues.”

Physics World has selected two research advances by MIT physicists for its Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year for 2024, reports Hamish Johnston for Physics World. Graduate student Andrew Denniston and his colleagues were honored for their work “being the first to unify two distinct descriptions of atomic nuclei,” which Johnston describes as a “major step forward in our understanding of nuclear structure and strong interactions.” MIT researchers were also featured for their work demonstrating quantum error correction on an atomic processor with 48 logical qubits, making it “far more likely that quantum computers will become practical problem-solving machines.”

Prof. David Autor has been named a Senior Fellow in the Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Fellows program, and Profs. Sara Beery, Gabriele Farina, Marzyeh Ghassemi, and Yoon Kim have been named Early Career AI2050 Fellows, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes. The AI2050 fellowships provide funding and resources, while challenging “researchers to imagine the year 2050, where AI has been extremely beneficial and to conduct research that helps society realize its most beneficial impacts,” explains Nietzel. 

TIME has named Lisa Su ’90 SM ’91 PhD ’94, chair and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, the 2024 CEO of the year. “It was at MIT that Su first experienced a semiconductor lab, where she was taken by the idea that such a tiny piece of hardware could carry so much mathematical firepower,” writes Billy Perrigo. “I was really lucky early in my career,” says Su. “Every two years, I did a different thing.” Su adds: “I felt like I was in training for the opportunity to do something meaningful in the semiconductor industry. And AMD was my shot.”

Lisa Su '90, SM '91, PhD '94, chair and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, has been named one of the Financial Times’ most influential women of the year. “Lisa Su is a trailblazer,” writes Tsai Ing-wen, the former president of Taiwan. “Su has shattered glass ceilings, becoming the first female CEO to lead AMD, the AI chipmaker based in Silicon Valley, and she has broken stereotypes in her industry.” Ing-Wen adds that Su is a “role model, as well as an example of perseverance and strength who inspires us all.”

The MIT women’s cross-country team won its first national championship, securing the Division 3 title, reports Amin Touri for The Boston Globe. “Junior Kate Sanderson of West Hartford finished 16th, leading five Engineers to score in the top 40, the only team to do so as depth delivered for MIT,” writes Touri. “Rujuta Sane, Christina Crow, Liv Girand, and Lexi Fernandez rounded out the scoring for MIT, but Heather Jensen and Gillian Roeder were just seconds back as all seven Engineers finished within a span of 33.4 seconds.”

Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson, recipients of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics, join Boston Public Radio to discuss their research examining the role of institutions in creating shared prosperity. “For the longer-term health of the U.S. economy,” says Acemoglu, “there’s probably nothing more important than its institutions. If any president, any politician, any party damages those institutions, that’s the first thing we should focus on.” Johnson adds: “Democracy has to deliver on shared prosperity. Otherwise people get very annoyed and they question the system.”

Forbes contributor Michael T. Nietzel spotlights the newest cohort of Rhodes Scholars, which includes Yiming Chen '24, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo from MIT. Nietzel notes that Oluigbo has “published numerous peer-reviewed articles and conducts research on applying artificial intelligence to complex medical problems and systemic healthcare challenges.”