Anantha P. Chandrakasan is dean of MIT’s School of Engineering, MIT’s Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer, and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He serves as chair of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium and the MIT AI Hardware Program, and co-chair of the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab, the MIT-Takeda Program, and the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology.
He earned his bachelor’s (1989), master’s (1990), and doctoral (1994) degrees in electrical engineering and computer sciences from the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the MIT faculty in 1994 and was the director of the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories from 2006 to 2011. From July 2011 through June 2017, he served as head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), a position that concluded with his appointment as dean in July 2017.
As dean of engineering since 2017, Chandrakasan has implemented various interdisciplinary programs, creating new models for how academia and industry can work together to accelerate the pace of research. This has resulted in the launch of initiatives including the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, the MIT-Takeda Program, the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative, the MIT Mobility Initiative, the MIT Quest for Intelligence, the MIT AI Hardware Program, the MIT-Northpond Program, the MIT Faculty Founder Initiative, and the MIT-Novo Nordisk Artificial Intelligence Postdoctoral Fellows Program.
Chandrakasan has also played a role in establishing initiatives beyond the School of Engineering. He was instrumental in founding the Schwarzman College of Computing in 2018, marking the most significant structural change to MIT in nearly 70 years. He has served in leadership roles on MIT Fast Forward, an Institute-wide plan for addressing climate change; as the inaugural chair of the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health; as the co-chair of the academic workstream for MIT’s Task Force 2021; and played an important role in the early committee for the creation of MIT.nano.
One of his top priorities as dean has been fostering a sense of community within MIT’s largest school. He has launched several programs to give students and staff a more active role in shaping the initiatives and operations of the school, including the Staff Advice & Implementation Committee, the undergraduate Student Advisory Group, the Graduate Student Advisory Group (GradSAGE), the Faculty Gender Equity Committee, and the MIT School of Engineering Postdoctoral Fellowship Program for Engineering Excellence. Working closely with GradSAGE, Chandrakasan has also played a role in establishing the Daniel J. Riccio Graduate Engineering Leadership Program.
As MIT’s inaugural Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer, Chandrakasan collaborates with key stakeholders across MIT, as well as external partners, to launch initiatives and new collaborations in support of the Institute’s strategic priorities. In this new role, he will help develop and implement plans to advance research, education, and innovation in areas that President Kornbluth has identified as her top priorities — such as climate change and sustainability, artificial intelligence, and the life sciences.
Before becoming dean in 2017, Chandrakasan served for six years as head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), MIT’s largest academic department. As department head, Chandrakasan spearheaded initiatives that enabled students, postdocs, and faculty to conduct research, explore entrepreneurial projects, and engage with EECS. For students, one of these initiatives included the Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, known as “SuperUROP,” a year-long independent research program launched in 2012 and expanded to the whole School of Engineering in 2015. He also created Start6, which expanded to StartMIT, an independent activities period (IAP) class that provides students and postdocs the opportunity to learn from and interact with industrial innovation leaders. Finally, he created Rising Stars in EECS, an academic career workshop that rotates amongst various universities and has become a model for similar efforts in other disciplines.
Chandrakasan leads the MIT Energy-Efficient Circuits and Systems Group, whose research projects have addressed security hardware, energy harvesting, and wireless charging for the internet of things; energy-efficient circuits and systems for multimedia processing; and platforms for ultra-low-power biomedical electronics.
He is a co-author of Low Power Digital CMOS Design (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), Digital Integrated Circuits (Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2003, 2nd edition), and Sub-threshold Design for Ultra-Low Power Systems (Springer 2006). He was also recognized as the author with the highest number of publications in the 60-year history of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).
Chandrakasan is the recipient of the 2019 Solid-State Circuit Society’s Distinguished Service Award, the 2013 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits, the 2009 Semiconductor Industry Association University Researcher Award, an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven in 2016, and the 2017 UC Berkeley EE Distinguished Alumni Award. He is also the recipient of the 2022 IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal.
A fellow of the IEEE, in 2015 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, in 2019 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and in 2020 he was elected as fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Chandrakasan currently serves on the SMART Governing Board. He previously served on the Board of The Engine from 2016-2021, the Board of Trustees of the Perkins School for the Blind from 2018-2022, and the Board of Analog Devices Inc. from 2019-2024.