Meet Anantha Chandrakasan, First Indian-Born Provost Of MIT

Professor Anantha Chandrakasan has become the first Indian-American to be named Provost of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He will succeed Cynthia Barnhart who announced her resignation from the position in February.

Mr Chandrakasan will assume the senior academic leadership position from July 1. He will oversee MIT's financial strategy, faculty affairs, institutional planning, and instructional programming in his role as provost.

Who Is Anantha Chandrakasan?

1. Anantha Chandrakasan was born in Chennai and moved to the US during his teenage years. He completed his bachelor's degree in 1989, master's in 1990, and PhD in 1994 in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley.
2. After earning his doctoral degree, he joined MIT's Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) as the Director. In 2011, he became the Head of the EECS department, where he launched several initiatives, including the Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, known as SuperUROP, the Rising Stars program for women, the Postdoc6 initiative for postdocs to help them develop their skills, and StartMIT for students to upgrade their skills.
3. In 2017, he was appointed Dean of the MIT School of Engineering. He has served as the Conference Chair of the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) since 2010. He received recognition as the author with the most articles in the IEEE ISSCC's 60-year history. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2015, after becoming an IEEE fellow.
4. Mr Chandrakasan also leads a research team at MIT, known as the Energy-Efficient Circuits and Systems Group. It focuses on developing secure hardware for devices, creating energy-harvesting systems, wireless charging for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, designing energy-efficient circuits, and building ultra-low-power biomedical electronics.
5. He is the recipient of several awards such as the 2009 Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), University Researcher Award, the 2013 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits, an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven in 2016, and the UC Berkeley EE Distinguished Alumni Award in 2017.