Department of EECS announces 2025 promotions and appointments

By Jane Halpern

March 18, 2025 | Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Top row, left to right: Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, Yoon Kim, Jelena Notaros, Tess Smidt Middle row, left to right: Dylan Hadfield-Menell, Anand Natarajan, Negar Reiskarimian Bottom row, left to right: Mohammad Alizadeh, Ruonan Han, Thomas Heldt, Alfred Spector

The Department of EECS is proud to announce the following promotions and appointment, all effective July 1, 2025:

To Associate Professor Without Tenure (AWOT)

Henry Corrigan-Gibbs is being promoted to Associate Professor Without Tenure, effective July 1, 2025. Corrigan-Gibbs builds computer systems that provide strong security and privacy properties using ideas from cryptography, computer security, and computer systems. His work has influenced IETF and NIST standards, and his Prio system for privacy-preserving telemetry data collection is used in Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems.

Corrigan-Gibbs has received the MIT EECS Jerome Saltzer Award for Excellence in Teaching Recitation Sections (2023), an Honorable Mention for the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award (2020), three IACR Best Young Researcher Paper Awards, the Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies (2016), and an IEEE Security and Privacy Distinguished Paper Award (2015). He completed his PhD in the Applied Cryptography Group at Stanford, where he was advised by Dan Boneh. After that, he was a postdoc with Bryan Ford at EPFL.

Within the Department, Corrigan-Gibbs has co-developed (alongside Yael Kalai and Srini Devadas) 6.160, a new undergraduate security class focusing on both cryptographic theory and hands-on, applied security skills. He has also developed an online tool focusing on finance management for researchers, which is widely used by both PIs and the CSAIL fiscal staff.

Dylan Hadfield-Menell is being promoted to Associate Professor Without Tenure, effective July 1, 2025.  Hadfield-Menell’s research focuses on the problem of agent alignment: the challenge of identifying algorithmic solutions to alignment problems that arise from groups of AI systems, principal-agent pairs (i.e., human-robot teams), and societal oversight of ML systems. He aims to develop frameworks that account for uncertainty about the objective being optimized. 

Hadfield-Menell is a recipient of the Berkeley Fellowship, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the C.V. Ramamoorthy Distinguished Research Award, and the AI2050 Early Career Fellowship. He earned his undergraduate degree from MIT and his PhD from the University of California Berkeley, before joining MIT EECS in 2021. From 2020-2024, he served as the CRO of Preamble AI, an AI-Safety-as-a-Service company.

Within the Department, Hadfield-Menell has taught a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses, including introductory programming (6.009, 6.1010), robotics (6.141, 6.4200), a seminar on AI alignment (6.s979); and, most recently, “AI: Decision-Making and Society” (6.3950). he has also introduced a new robotics ethics module, and modernized lectures and assignments on modern neural network methods for 6.4200. Additionally, Hadfield-Menell has contributed to AI regulation through outreach to policymakers, authorship and co-authorship of opinion pieces and policy briefs, and participation in international dialogues between academics focused on AI policy and safety.

Yoon Kim is being promoted to Associate Professor Without Tenure, effective July 1, 2025. A principal investigator in CSAIL, Kim’s work straddles the intersection between natural language processing and machine learning, and touches upon efficient training and deployment of large-scale models, exploring the limitations of large language models, as well as enhancing their capabilities. His work has been recognized with an AI2050 Early Career Fellowship.

Kim earned his PhD in computer science at Harvard University; his MS in Data Science from New York University; his MA in Statistics from Columbia University; and his BA in both Math and Economics from Cornell. After earning his PhD, he joined IBM as a postdoc and CSAIL as a visiting scientist until 2021, when he joined MIT EECS. 

Within the department, Kim has joined with Jacob Andreas to teach 6.8611 (Quantitative Methods in Natural Language Processing), and also developed and has been teaching 6.S986 (a special subject on LLMs). He has served on the graduate admissions committee for the NLSP area and the SCC-BCS search committee.

Anand Natarajan is being promoted to Associate Professor Without Tenure, effective July 1, 2025. A principal investigator within CSAIL, Natarajan’s research is in theoretical quantum information, particularly nonlocality, quantum complexity theory, and semidefinite programming hierarchies. Essentially, his work attempts to assess the complexity of computational problems in a quantum setting, determining both the limits of quantum computers’ capability and the trustworthiness of their output.

Natarajan is a recipient of the NSF Career Fellowship (2024) and a FOCS Best Paper Award (2019). He earned his PhD in Physics from MIT, and an MS in Computer Science and BS in Physics from Stanford University. Prior to joining MIT, he spent time as a postdoc at the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter at Caltech.

Within the department, Natarajan has taught Intro to Algorithms (6.006/6.1210) and Math for Computer Science (6.042/6.1200), as well as four quantum computing classes, three of which he co-developed (graduate courses on Quantum Nonlocality and Quantum Cryptography and an undergraduate class on Quantum Systems Engineering), and one of which he significantly revamped (Quantum Complexity Theory). He has served on the graduate admissions committee and helped organize the theory colloquium and theory visit day.

Jelena Notaros is being promoted to Associate Professor Without Tenure, effective July 1, 2025. She is a Principal Investigator in the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics and a Core Faculty Member of the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories.

Notaros’s research has been focused on developing novel silicon-photonics-based systems, devices, and fabrication platforms that enable emission of light from photonic chips that spans the infrared-to-visible spectrum and with reconfigurable holographic emission profiles. She has then applied these developments to demonstrate next-generation chip-based solutions for holographic augmented-reality displays, volumetric 3D printers, trapped-ion quantum systems, optical tweezers for biophotonics, underwater communications transceivers, and adaptive solid-state LiDAR sensors. Her work has both enabled foundational advancements for the field of silicon photonics and opened up many of these new application areas for the field of silicon photonics as a whole for the first time. For her research contributions, Notaros has received the NSF CAREER Award, has been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 List in Science, was selected as one of three Top DARPA Risers, and has received best paper awards at the 2024 CLEO, 2022 APC, 2022 FiO (in two categories), and 2019 CLEO Conferences, among other honors. Notaros received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2020 and 2017, respectively, and B.S. degree from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2015. Immediately after receiving her Ph.D., she joined MIT EECS as an assistant professor in 2020.

In addition to her research activities, Notaros has developed a first-of-its-kind silicon-photonics class (6.2320/6.6320) that incorporates hands-on labs in which students utilize state-of-the-art equipment and custom-built probe stations to experimentally characterize a suite of chips specifically designed for the class. Additionally, she has taught the core undergraduate electromagnetics class (6.2300[6.013]) and the core graduate electromagnetics class (6.6300[6.630]). Beyond classroom teaching, she has codeveloped a chipset for lab-based silicon-photonics education that is being distributed nationwide, a silicon-photonics online course, a lab-based silicon-photonics bootcamp, and a design-based silicon-photonics summer academy. Moreover, she has served as Co-Chair of the EECS Rising Stars Workshop, Photonics and Quantum Area Chair of the MIT EECS Graduate Admissions Committee, Organizer of the MIT RLE Hermann Haus Lecture, TPC Member for the Optica CLEO and APC Conferences, Chair of the MIT EE Curriculum Electromagnetics and Photonics Track, Member of the MIT EE Teaching Lab Visioning Committee, and panelist, presenter, or volunteer for over 50 student-specific events during her time on the faculty thus far.

Negar Reiskarimian is being promoted to Associate Professor Without Tenure, effective July 1, 2025.  Reiskarimian is a core faculty member of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL). Her research group interests include RF and millimeter-wave microelectronic devices, circuits and systems and applied electromagnetics for a variety of applications. Her recent research seeks to develop novel circuit architecture that improves wireless communication systems across several fronts, including vulnerability to strong interference.

Reiskarimian has been a co-recipient of several best paper awards at top circuits conferences and journals such as IEEE ISSCC Jack Kilby Outstanding Student Paper Award in 2025, IEEE RFIC 2024 Best Student Paper Award – 1st Place, 2021 IEEE Microwave Magazine Best Paper Award, IEEE IMS 2020 Best Student Paper Award – 2nd Place. She is a Marconi Society Paul Baran Young Scholar, a recipient of the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship and has been named to an X-Window Career Development Chair. Reiskarimian received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering, from Sharif University of Technology (Tehran, Iran), in 2011 and 2013 and the M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University in 2017 and 2020.

Within the Department, Reiskarimian has taught the core circuits class (6.200, formerly 6.002), the analog electronics laboratory subject (6.204, formerly 6.101), and the solid-state circuits class (6.209, now 6.301). Additionally, she co-developed (along with Ruonan Han) a new semiconductor electronic circuits class that focuses on nonlinear devices with an integrated circuit design project. Reiskarimian is a member of the electrical engineering curriculum committee, in which she has been a track convener for the Devices, Circuits, and Systems track; she has chaired the circuits graduate admissions, and served as a mentor for MSRP.

Tess Smidt is being promoted to Associate Professor Without Tenure, effective July 1, 2025. Smidt is the principal investigator of the Atomic Architects group at the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), where she works at the intersection of physics, geometry, and machine learning to design algorithms that aid in the understanding of physical systems under physical and geometric constraints, with applications to the design both of new materials and new molecules. She has a particular focus on symmetries present in 3D physical systems, such as rotation, translation, and reflection.

Smidt has received an Air Force Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) award, the EECS Outstanding Educator Award, and been named to X-Window Consortium career development chair. She earned her SB in Physics from MIT in 2012 and her PhD in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2018. Prior to joining the MIT EECS faculty in 2021, she was the 2018 Alvarez Postdoctoral Fellow in Computing Sciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Software Engineering Intern on the Google Accelerated Sciences team, where she developed Euclidean symmetry equivariant neural networks which naturally handle 3D geometry and geometric tensor data.

Within the department, Smidt has taught 6.3900 (Introduction to Machine Learning) and (6.730 Physics: Solid-State Applications), and has developed her own graduate class focusing on the intersection between ML and physics, (6.S966 Symmetry and its Application to Machine Learning). She has served on the graduate admissions committees for both the Department of EECS and the Center for Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), serves on the SoE/SCC “with computing” degrees committee, and co-chaired the 2024 EECS Rising Stars workshop.

To Full Professor

Mohammad Alizadeh has been promoted to Full Professor, effective July 1, 2025. A member of CSAIL, his research focuses on computer networks and systems, with an emphasis on leveraging ML/AI for data-driven optimization, intelligent decision-making, and simulation.

Alizadeh’s contributions have been widely recognized with numerous honors, including the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship, VMware Systems Research Award, SIGCOMM Rising Star Award, NSF CAREER Award, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, SIGCOMM Test of Time Award, and multiple best paper awards. He earned his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and his BS from Sharif University of Technology. Before joining MIT EECS in 2015, he worked at Insieme Networks and Cisco Systems.

Within the department, Alizadeh has redesigned the curriculum for 6.5820 (formerly 6.829) to emphasize the role of models and theory in network design, co-created a seminar-style course on machine learning for systems, and contributed to 6.1800 (formerly 6.033). He has served on the CS faculty search committee, the EE special faculty search committee, and various award and fellowship committees. As Industry Officer for EECS, he oversees the EECS Alliance, which connects students with internships, post-graduation opportunities, and industry collaborations, as well as 6A, an internship matching program linking students with leading companies.

Ruonan Han is being promoted to full Professor, effective July 1, 2025. A core faculty member and Associate Director of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL), his research explores microelectronic circuits and systems which bridge the terahertz gap between microwave and infrared domains, while still being able to be fabricated at commercial silicon foundries. Among other THz components and systems, he has developed chip-scale molecular clocks and ultra-miniature RFID tags, and is currently investigating THz 3D imaging, THz-based security for RFID tags, and quantum applications of THz.

Han is the recipient of the ECE Outstanding PhD Thesis Award and Innovation Award from Cornell University, three Best Student Paper Awards from IEEE RFIC Symposium, NSF Faculty Early CAREER Development Award, the Intel Outstanding Researcher Award, IEEE Microwave Theory & Technique Society Distinguished Lecturer, IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Distinguished Lecturer and the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society New Frontier Award, among others. He received his B.S. degree in microelectronics from Fudan University, China, in 2007; his M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Florida in 2009; and his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Cornell University in 2014. He joined MIT EECS in 2014.

Within the Department, Han has taught 6.002 (now 6.200) Circuits and Electronics, 6.012 (now 6.250) Nanoelectronics and Computer Systems, 6.301 (now 6.209) Solid-State Circuits, and 6.775 (now 6.600) CMOS Analog and Circuit Design. He also taught and contributed to the development of 6.776 (now 6.602) High Frequency Integrated Circuits, and has co-developed (alongside Negar Reiskarimian and Karl Berggren) a new sophomore/junior transistor circuits class that includes a chip tape-out experience. Han is the Director of MIT MTL Center of Integrated Circuits and Systems, and also serves as the Undergraduate Laboratory Officer for the department, overseeing 10K+ square feet of undergraduate laboratory teaching space, 10+ classes, and several staff.

Thomas Heldt is being promoted to full Professor, effective July 1, 2025. Heldt is a core member of both EECS and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and a principal investigator with MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). He was recently named an associate director of IMES. Heldt conducts research in critical care informatics with relation to neuromonitoring applications, primarily in high-acuity clinical environments (such as neurocritical and neonatal critical care units) where patients present with deeply unique situations. He has developed methods to non-invasively measure intracranial pressure; created early-warning systems for sepsis; worked on reducing alarms in the neonatal intensive care units; and designed techniques using consumer-grade portable electronics to measure eye movements to detect neurodegenerative diseases.

After studying Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University (Germany), and then at Yale University, Heldt received his Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) PhD from the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST) in 2004. He then began postdoctoral training at MIT’s Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronics Systems and RLE before joining MIT EECS and IMES in 2013.

Within the Department, Heldt has taught and revised 6.021(now 6.481) and 6.022 (now 6.482), and redeveloped (alongside Collin Stultz) the HST.090 Cardiovascular Pathophysiology class. He has also worked with Ahmad Bahai to introduce a new seminar series on microelectronics within life sciences. He leads the EE graduate admissions process and serves on the MIT Presidential Committee on Distinguished Fellowships and is an elected member of the MIT Faculty Newsletter Editorial Board.

Appointment To Professor of the Practice

Alfred Spector is being appointed Professor of the Practice, effective July 1, 2025.  Spector, a Senior Advisor at Blackstone, joined MIT EECS as a Visiting Scholar in 2022. His career has led him from innovation in large scale, networked computing systems to broad engineering and research leadership. Previously, Spector was CTO and Head of Engineering at Two Sigma Investments. Before that, he spent eight years as VP of Research and Special Initiatives at Google, and he held various senior-level positions at IBM, including as global VP of Services and Software Research and global CTO of IBM’s Software Business. Earlier in his career, he founded Transarc Corporation, a pioneer in distributed transaction processing and wide-area file systems, and he was a tenured professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

Spector was a Hertz Fellow at Stanford, is a Fellow of both the ACM and the IEEE, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He won the 2001 IEEE Kanai Award for Distributed Computing and was co-awarded the 2016 ACM Software Systems Award. In 2018-19, he lectured widely as a Phi Beta Kappa Scholar (for example, on the growing importance of computer science across all disciplines based on the evocative phrase, “CS+X”). He has been a member of the ACM Turing Award Committee and has done national service through chairing the NSF’s CISE Advisory Board and his membership on the Army and Defense Science Boards. His Ph.D., in computer science, is from Stanford, and his B.A., in applied math, is from Harvard.

Within the Department, Spector has developed and taught 6.S963 (Beyond Models: Applying Data Science/AI Effectively), and been involved in multiple initiatives seeking to integrate computing and data science training across disciplines. Recently, he co-authored a Cambridge University Press textbook, “Data Science in Context: Foundations, Challenges, Opportunities”, which won the 2024 PROSE award in Computing and Information Sciences.