The Boston Seminar Series is honored to host a discussion on the past and future of digital learning with Prof. Sanjay Sarma, the director of Digital Learning at MIT, Prof. Anant Agarwal, President of edX, and Abe Murray, Google Senior Product Manager. Hunt Lambert ’85, Dean of Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education and Harvard Extension School, will be our moderator. Google, a partner with edX on MOOC.org, will be hosting the event in Kendall Square.
Speakers:
Sanjay Sarma is the Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers professor of mechanical engineering and newly appointed Director of Digital Learning at MIT. Sarma was one of the founders of the Auto-ID Center at MIT, which, along with a number of partner companies and its “spin-off,” EPCglobal, developed the technical concepts and standards of modern RFID. He also chaired the Auto-ID Research Council consisting of six labs worldwide, which he helped to establish. Today, the suite of standards developed by the Auto-ID Center, commonly referred to as the EPC, are utilized by over a thousand companies on five continents. Between 2004 and 2006, Sarma took a leave of absence from MIT to found the software company OATSystems, which was acquired by Checkpoint Systems in 2008. He is a consultant and board member at several companies, including EPC Global, and also serves as a permanent guest of the board of GS1 and a member of the board of governors of GS1US. Sarma also serves on the City of Boston’s Complete Streets Advisory Group.
Anant Agarwal is the President of edX. Anant taught the first course of edX on circuits and electronics from MIT, which drew 155,000 students from 162 countries. He has served as the director of CSAIL, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and is a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. He is also a founder of Tilera Corporation which created the Tile multicore processor. He led the development of the Raw multicore processor, the Sparcle multi-threaded microprocessor, and the Alewife parallel computer. He also led the VirtualWires project at MIT and was the founder of Virtual Machine Works. Anant won the Maurice Wilkes prize for computer architecture, and MIT’s Smullin and Jamieson prizes for teaching. He holds a Guinness World Record for the largest microphone array, and is an author of the textbook “Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits.” His work on Organic Computing was selected by Scientific American as one of 10 World-Changing Ideas in 2011, and he was named in Forbes’ list of top 15 education innovators in 2012. Anant holds a Ph.D. from Stanford and a bachelor’s from IIT Madras. Anant is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the ACM. He hacks on WebSim, a web-based circuits laboratory, in his spare time.
Huntington D. Lambert (Hunt) is Dean of the Division of Continuing Education at Harvard University. The Division serves 20,000 students annually and includes Harvard Extension School, with more than 650 online and on-campus courses, as well as numerous undergraduate and graduate degree programs; Harvard Summer School, which offers more than 300 courses to nearly 6,000 students each summer and includes study abroad programs in more than 30 worldwide locations; Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement; Harvard Professional Development Programs; and the Crimson Summer Academy. Previously, Lambert served as Associate Provost of OnlinePlus at Colorado State University (CSU), which enrolls more than 10,000 students in four undergraduate, 27 masters, and three PhD programs. Prior to this, Lambert was a founder and interim CEO of CSU Global Campus and Associate Vice President of Economic Development at CSU. He is also the former Director of the Colorado State University Entrepreneurship Center and a former member of the faculty at the CSU College of Business. During his business career, he was part of 25 startups in 12 countries, 22 of which are still operating. He has helped another 15 startups during his time at CSU including Solix Biofuels, EnviroFit, and Keen One Foods. He has taught strategy, entrepreneurship, and business plan development.
Abe Murray is an entrepreneur and high tech generalist with over a decade of experience in the industry as company founder, project leader and individual contributor. Abe Murray is also a private developer, producing software for personal and entrepreneurial use. He captained a commercial fishing vessel and lead a mussel farming aquaculture company from a young age. A graduate of Harvard Business School, Murray founded a novel web 2.0 company with a fellow classmate. At Google, he built and launched the eBook platform before joining the Research team.
When: Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Where: Google, Kendall Square, 3 Cambridge Ctr , Cambridge MA (above the MIT Coop)
Agenda: 6:00 pm, Registration & Reception (includes select beer & wine)
7:00 pm, Presentation
8:00 pm, Dessert & Coffee & Discussion
9:00 pm, End of program
Cost: $25 for members of the MIT Club of Boston
$25 for guests of members
$25 for MIT Club of NH or AMITA members (contact Lina or Helen for discount code)
Free for Google employees (contact Lina or Helen for discount code)
$35 for all others
$5 extra for all registrations after 1/29/14
Note: All guests must show a valid photo ID and check in with building security
Deadline: Early registration ends Wednesday, January 29
More information here
