Melissa Choi has been named the following director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory, efficient July 1. At present assistant director of the laboratory, Choi succeeds Eric Evans, who will step down on June 30 after 18 years as director.
Sharing the information in a letter to MIT college and employees at this time, Vice President for Analysis Ian Waitz famous Choi’s 25-year profession of “excellent technical and advisory management,” each at MIT and in service to the protection neighborhood.
“Melissa has a fabulous technical breadth in addition to wonderful management and administration abilities, and she or he has introduced a compelling strategic imaginative and prescient for the Laboratory,” Waitz wrote. “She is a considerate, intuitive chief who prioritizes communication, collaboration, mentoring, {and professional} growth as foundations for an organizational tradition that advances her imaginative and prescient for Lab-wide excellence in service to the nation.”
Choi’s appointment marks a brand new chapter in Lincoln Laboratory’s storied historical past working to maintain the nation secure and safe. As a federally funded analysis and growth heart operated by MIT for the Division of Protection, the laboratory has supplied the federal government an impartial perspective on essential science and know-how problems with nationwide curiosity for greater than 70 years. Distinctive amongst nationwide R&D labs, the laboratory focuses on each long-term system growth and fast demonstration of operational prototypes, to guard and defend the nation in opposition to superior threats. In tandem with its function in creating know-how for nationwide safety, the laboratory’s integral relationship with the MIT campus neighborhood permits impactful partnerships on basic analysis, instructing, and workforce growth in essential science and know-how areas.
“In a time of nice international instability and fast-evolving threats, the mission of Lincoln Laboratory has by no means been extra vital to the nation,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “It is usually important that the laboratory apply government-funded, cutting-edge applied sciences to resolve essential issues in fields from house exploration to local weather change. Together with her depth and breadth of expertise, eager imaginative and prescient, and easy model, Melissa Choi has earned monumental belief and respect throughout the Lincoln and MIT communities. As Eric Evans steps down, we couldn’t ask for a finer successor.”
Choi has served as assistant director of Lincoln Laboratory since 2019, with oversight of 5 of the Lab’s 9 technical divisions: Biotechnology and Human Techniques, Homeland Safety and Air Visitors Management, Cyber Safety and Data Sciences, Communication Techniques, and ISR and Tactical Techniques. Partaking deeply with the wants of the broader protection neighborhood, Choi served for six years on the Air Drive Scientific Advisory Board, with a time period as vice chair, and was appointed to the DoD’s Risk Discount Advisory Committee. She is at present a member of the nationwide Protection Science Board’s Everlasting Subcommittee on Risk Discount.
Having devoted her whole profession to Lincoln Laboratory, Choi says her lengthy tenure displays a dedication to the lab’s work and neighborhood.
“By way of my profession, I’ve been lucky to have had extremely revolutionary and motivated individuals to collaborate with as we resolve essential nationwide safety challenges,” Choi says. “Persevering with to work with such a powerful, laboratory-wide crew as director is without doubt one of the most enjoyable features of the job for me.”
Success via collaboration
Choi got here to Lincoln Laboratory as a technical employees member in 1999, with a doctoral diploma in utilized arithmetic. As she progressed to steer analysis groups, together with the Techniques and Evaluation Group after which the Energetic Optical Techniques Group, Choi realized the worth of pooling experience from researchers throughout the laboratory.
“I used to be capable of shift between loads of completely different initiatives very early on in my profession, from radar methods to sensor networks. As a result of I wasn’t an professional on the time in any a type of fields, I realized to achieve out to the numerous completely different specialists on the laboratory,” Choi says.
Choi maintained that mindset via all of her roles on the laboratory, together with as head of the Homeland Safety and Air Visitors Management Division, which she led from 2014 and 2019. In that function, she helped deliver collectively various know-how and human methods experience to determine the Humanitarian Help and Catastrophe Reduction Group. Amongst different achievements, the group supplied assist to FEMA and different emergency response businesses after the 2017 hurricane season prompted unprecedented flooding and destruction throughout swaths of Texas, Florida, the Caribbean, and Puerto Rico.
“We have been capable of quickly prototype and discipline a number of applied sciences to assist with the restoration efforts,” Choi says. “It was an incredible instance of how we are able to apply our nationwide safety focus to different essential nationwide issues.”
Outdoors of her technical and advisory achievements, Choi has made an influence at Lincoln Laboratory via her commitments to an inclusive office. In 2020, she co-led the examine “Stopping Discrimination and Harassment and Selling an Inclusive Tradition at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.” The work was a part of a longstanding dedication to supporting colleagues within the office via in depth mentoring and participation in worker useful resource teams.
“I’ve felt a way of belonging on the laboratory for the reason that minute I got here right here, and I’ve had the good thing about assist from leaders, mentors, and advocates since then. Bettering assist methods is essential to me,” says Choi, who would be the first girl to steer Lincoln Laboratory. “Everybody ought to be capable of really feel that they belong and may thrive.”
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Choi helped the laboratory navigate the disruptions — with its operations deemed important — which she says taught her quite a bit about main via adversity.
“We resolve exhausting issues on the laboratory on a regular basis, however to get thrown into an issue that we had by no means seen earlier than was a studying expertise,” Choi says. “We noticed the complete lab come collectively, from management to every of the divisions and departments.”
That synergy has additionally helped Choi type strategic partnerships inside and out of doors of the laboratory to reinforce its mission. Drawing on her information of the laboratory’s capabilities and its historical past of creating impactful methods for NASA and NOAA, Choi just lately led the formation of a brand new Civil Area Techniques and Expertise Workplace.
“We have been seeing this convergence between Division of Protection and civilian house initiatives, as going to the Moon, Mars, and the cislunar space [between the earth and moon] has change into an enormous emphasis for the complete nation usually,” Choi explains. “It appeared like a great time for us to drag these two sides collectively and develop our NASA portfolio. It offers us an awesome alternative to collaborate with MIT centrally, and it ties in with our different strategic instructions.”
Constructing on success
Choi believes her trajectory via the technical ranks of Lincoln Laboratory will assist her lead it now.
“That have offers me a view into what it is like at a number of ranges of the laboratory,” Choi says. “I’ve seen what’s labored and what hasn’t labored, and I’ve realized from completely different views and management types. Robust leaders are essential, however it’s vital to acknowledge that the majority of the work will get executed by the technical, assist, and administrative workers throughout our divisions, departments, and places of work. Remembering being an early employees member helps you perceive how exhausting and thrilling the work is, and in addition how essential these contributions are for our mission.”
Choi says she can be trying ahead to increasing the laboratory’s collaboration with MIT’s primary campus.
“So many areas, from AI to local weather to house, have alternative for us to return collectively,” Choi says. “We even have some nice fashions of progress, just like the Beaver Works Heart or the Division of the Air Drive – MIT Synthetic Intelligence Accelerator program, that we are able to construct from. Everybody right here could be very enthusiastic about doing that, and it’ll completely be a precedence for me.”
Finally, Choi plans to steer Lincoln Laboratory utilizing the strategy that’s confirmed profitable all through her profession.
“I imagine very a lot that I shouldn’t be the neatest individual within the room, and I depend on the sensible individuals working with me,” Choi says. “I’m a part of a crew and I work with a crew to steer. That has all the time been my model: Set a imaginative and prescient and targets, and empower and assist the individuals I work with to make selections and construct on that technique.”
