Leadership

Ian A. Waitz is the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and vice president for research at MIT. Vice President Waitz is the Institute’s senior research officer and has overall responsibility for research administration and policy at the Institute. He sets MIT’s strategic research direction, fosters an outstanding research environment for faculty, students, and staff, and enables major multidisciplinary research initiatives. The Vice President for Research is responsible for research integrity and compliance and plays a central role in the Institute’s research relationships with the federal government, industry, and other sponsors. Vice President Waitz oversees MIT Lincoln Laboratory and more than a dozen interdisciplinary research laboratories and centers.

Waitz has been on the faculty at MIT since 1991. He has served as head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, as dean of the School of Engineering, and most recently, from 2017 to 2024, as MIT’s vice chancellor for undergraduate and graduate education. While leading the Office of the Vice Chancellor, Waitz re-envisioned the first-year undergraduate academic experience, expanded undergraduate advising and financial aid, and increased support and professional development opportunities for graduate students. He also led MIT’s response to graduate student unionization. As dean of the School of Engineering from 2011 to 2017, Waitz enhanced the school’s ability to attract and support exceptional students and faculty, launched the MIT-wide Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, fostered innovation and entrepreneurship among students and faculty, and advanced programs for residential and online learning.

Waitz’s early research led to advances in gas turbine engines, fluid mechanics, combustion, and acoustics. However, his most significant contributions have related to the modeling and evaluation of climate, air quality, and noise impacts of aviation, along with the assessment of technological, operational, and policy options for mitigating these impacts. These efforts have led to more rigorous evaluations of environmental policy and technology. His current research aims to reduce the climate impacts of aviation.

Waitz received his BS in 1986 from the Pennsylvania State University, his MS in 1988 from the George Washington University, and his PhD in 1991 from the California Institute of Technology. He has engaged widely with U.S. and international government and industry throughout his career. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and has been recognized by multiple awards for teaching and research, including MIT’s MacVicar Fellowship.

Committees on which the Vice President for Research serves

• Academic Council
• Risk and Audit Committee
• Committee for Renovation and Space Planning (CRSP)
• Information Technology Governance Committee
• Reactor Safeguards Committee
• Committee on Graduate Programs
• Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center

Committees chaired by the Vice President for Research

• Committee on Intellectual Property
• Institute Council on Environmental Health and Safety
• Research Council

Committees sponsored by the Vice President for Research

• Ad Hoc Research Administration Faculty Advisory Committee
• Committee On Research Computing
• Faculty Postdoctoral Advisory Committee (FPAC)

Committees that report to the Vice President for Research

• Committee on Animal Care (CAC)
• Committee on the Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects (COUHES)
• Committee on the Assessment of Biohazards and Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight (CAB/ESCRO)
• Lincoln Laboratory - Campus Interaction Committee
• Committee on Radiation Protection
• Reactor Safeguards Committee (MITRSC)
• Committee on Toxic Chemicals (CTC)

Anne E. White is the School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Engineering and associate vice president for research administration at MIT. Her research focuses on magnetic fusion energy and has contributed to the understanding of turbulent transport in magnetically confined fusion plasmas via diagnostic development, novel experimentation, and validation of nonlinear gyrokinetic codes. Her group’s research is dedicated to the demonstration of nuclear fusion as an important and practical part of the world’s emerging sustainable energy future.

As associate vice president for research administration at MIT, White advises the vice president for research and oversees a number of central administrative teams that engage with MIT researchers and federal, industrial, and other sponsors to help advance MIT research from idea to impact. Research Administration Services, Research Systems and Support, Cost Analysis, Research Development, and the Office of Strategic Alliances and Technology Transfer (OSATT)—which comprises the Technology Licensing Office, Corporate Relations, and OSATT Core—report to her.

White received her PhD in physics at UCLA and performed research at the Electric Tokamak at UCLA, the National Spherical Torus Experiment at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and the DIII-D National Fusion Facility at General Atomics before joining MIT as a faculty member in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE). White's research has contributed to diagnostic development, turbulence and transport physics, and transport model validation on four tokamaks: Alcator C-Mod, ASDEX Upgrade, DIII-D, and National Spherical Torus Experiment Upgrade. At MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), White served as assistant division head for magnetic fusion energy collaborations and ran the Gyrokinetic Simulation Working Group and the Alcator C-Mod Transport Group. As associate director for education and outreach at PSFC, she also oversaw the center’s educational and K–12 outreach activities. She served as NSE department head from 2019 to 2023 and co-chaired the MIT Climate Nucleus from 2021 to 2024.

She currently serves on the MIT Gift Policy Committee and the MIT Faculty Policy Committee. In the role of associate vice president for research administration, she is a member of Academic Council, Dean’s Group, and the Academic Appointments Subgroup, serves ex officio on the Gift Acceptance Committee and the Committee on Intellectual Property, and convenes a number of working groups in support of research administration operations and strategy at MIT.

She currently chairs the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC), the federal advisory board to the director of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and helped write “Transformative Enabling Capabilities for Efficient Advance Toward Fusion Energy” (2018) and “Powering the Future: Fusion and Plasmas” (2021), two of several FESAC reports that defined the role of fusion as a transformative technology and laid out strategic actions and recommendations for the future of the U.S. fusion program. White has given numerous invited talks and seminars about fusion energy and plasma physics. In 2018, White led a team in NSE to develop a free MITx MOOC for global high school-level learners focused on nuclear science and engineering, and in 2022, White was one of a select group invited to speak at the White House summit, “Developing a Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy.” White was featured in WIRED’s “5 Levels” video series in 2023, explaining nuclear fusion to a popular audience.

She is a member of AAAS, the American Nuclear Society, and the American Physical Society (APS) and a fellow of the APS’s Division of Plasma Physics.

Committees on which the associate vice president for research administration serves

• Academic Appointments Subgroup
• Academic Council
• Dean's Group
• Gift Policy Committee

Committees chaired by the associate vice president for research administration

• Ad Hoc Committee on Climate-Related Industry Engagements

Peter Fisher, the Thomas A. Frank (1977) Professor of Physics, has served as associate vice president for research computing and data since October 2022. He also serves as head of MIT’s Office of Research Computing and Data. Fisher served as head of the Department of Physics from 2013 to 2022, where he led the Experimental Nuclear and Particle Physics Division.

Fisher has extensive experience in classical and quantum electrodynamics, including carrying out the most precise tests of the theory, and has over 300 publications in the field. He has also served as an expert witness in court cases related to electromagnetism. He has led a DARPA study of wireless energy transmission between spacecraft as part of the System F6 program, and is a founder of WiTricity, a startup developing wireless energy transmission for commercial use.

He has taught electromagnetism at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and was an instructor for the MIT Physics Undergraduate Laboratory, which includes several components related to electromagnetic radiation. Fisher serves as a referee for several journals, including Physical Review, Physical Review Letters, and Nuclear Instruments and Methods. He served on several national panels and advisory groups, including the Particle Physics Program Prioritization Panel that defined the roadmap for experimental particle physics over 10 years, encompassing about $8 billion in research funds from the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation.

His research interests are the experimental detection of dark matter and the development of new kinds of particle detectors. He carried out one of the first dark matter searches and since then has searched for dark matter on Earth and in space, including inventing a new kind of detector, the Dark Matter Time Projection Chamber. He recently published a book, What is Dark Matter?, with Princeton University Press.

Fisher received a bachelor of science in engineering physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1983 and a PhD in physics from Caltech in 1988.

Committees on which the associate vice president for research computing and data serves

• Academic Council
• Committee on the Library System
• Cybersecurity Committee
• Future of the Arts Committee
• Gift Acceptance Committee
• Information Technology Governance Committee
• Office of Research Computing and Data Advisory Committee

Committees that report to the associate vice president for research computing and data

• Committee on Research Computing and Data