Presenter

Maria Yang is the Gail E. Kendall (1978) Professor of mechanical engineering, faculty director for academics in the MIT D-Lab, and founder and director of MIT’s Ideation Lab. In her role as associate dean of engineering, she is focused on bolstering undergraduate and graduate academic programming and contributing to strategic initiatives at the school and Institute levels such as design, improving student experiences, and advancing opportunities for faculty support and mentoring, work that she has already begun through past and present department and Institute appointments.

Yang graduated from MIT with a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering (1991), after which she headed to Stanford University where she earned a master’s (1994) and PhD (2000) from the mechanical engineering department’s design division. She joined the MIT faculty in 2007.