Melissa Choi has been named the subsequent director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory, efficient July 1. Presently 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 school and workers right now, 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 wonderful technical breadth in addition to glorious 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 protected and safe. As a federally funded analysis and growth middle operated by MIT for the Division of Protection, the laboratory has supplied the federal government an impartial perspective on vital science and expertise problems with nationwide curiosity for greater than 70 years. Distinctive amongst nationwide R&D labs, the laboratory makes a speciality of 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 growing expertise for nationwide safety, the laboratory’s integral relationship with the MIT campus neighborhood permits impactful partnerships on basic analysis, educating, and workforce growth in vital science and expertise areas.
“In a time of nice international instability and fast-evolving threats, the mission of Lincoln Laboratory has by no means been extra necessary to the nation,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “It’s also important that the laboratory apply government-funded, cutting-edge applied sciences to resolve vital issues in fields from area exploration to local weather change. Together with her depth and breadth of expertise, eager imaginative and prescient, and easy type, 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 Methods, Homeland Safety and Air Visitors Management, Cyber Safety and Data Sciences, Communication Methods, and ISR and Tactical Methods. Partaking deeply with the wants of the broader protection neighborhood, Choi served for six years on the Air Pressure Scientific Advisory Board, with a time period as vice chair, and was appointed to the DoD’s Menace Discount Advisory Committee. She is presently a member of the nationwide Protection Science Board’s Everlasting Subcommittee on Menace Discount.
Having devoted her complete 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 vital nationwide safety challenges,” Choi says. “Persevering with to work with such a powerful, laboratory-wide crew as director is likely one of the most fun features of the job for me.”
Success by way of collaboration
Choi got here to Lincoln Laboratory as a technical workers member in 1999, with a doctoral diploma in utilized arithmetic. As she progressed to steer analysis groups, together with the Methods and Evaluation Group after which the Energetic Optical Methods Group, Choi realized the worth of pooling experience from researchers throughout the laboratory.
“I used to be in a position to shift between plenty of totally different initiatives very early on in my profession, from radar methods to sensor networks. As a result of I wasn’t an skilled on the time in any a type of fields, I realized to achieve out to the numerous totally different consultants on the laboratory,” Choi says.
Choi maintained that mindset by way of 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 numerous expertise and human methods experience to ascertain the Humanitarian Help and Catastrophe Reduction Group. Amongst different achievements, the group supplied help to FEMA and different emergency response companies after the 2017 hurricane season triggered unprecedented flooding and destruction throughout swaths of Texas, Florida, the Caribbean, and Puerto Rico.
“We had been in a position to quickly prototype and subject a number of applied sciences to assist with the restoration efforts,” Choi says. “It was a tremendous instance of how we will apply our nationwide safety focus to different vital nationwide issues.”
Outdoors of her technical and advisory achievements, Choi has made an influence at Lincoln Laboratory by way of 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 by way of in depth mentoring and participation in worker useful resource teams.
“I’ve felt a way of belonging on the laboratory because the minute I got here right here, and I’ve had the advantage of help from leaders, mentors, and advocates since then. Bettering help 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 might 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 by way of 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 your entire lab come collectively, from management to every of the divisions and departments.”
That synergy has additionally helped Choi kind strategic partnerships inside and out of doors of the laboratory to boost its mission. Drawing on her data of the laboratory’s capabilities and its historical past of growing impactful methods for NASA and NOAA, Choi lately led the formation of a brand new Civil Area Methods and Expertise Workplace.
“We had been seeing this convergence between Division of Protection and civilian area initiatives, as going to the Moon, Mars, and the cislunar space [between the earth and moon] has grow to be an enormous emphasis for your entire nation usually,” Choi explains. “It appeared like a very good time for us to tug these two sides collectively and develop our NASA portfolio. It offers us a terrific alternative to collaborate with MIT centrally, and it ties in with our different strategic instructions.”
Constructing on success
Choi believes her trajectory by way of 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 totally different views and management types. Robust leaders are essential, however it’s necessary to acknowledge that the majority of the work will get completed by the technical, help, and administrative staff throughout our divisions, departments, and workplaces. Remembering being an early workers member helps you perceive how exhausting and thrilling the work is, and likewise how vital these contributions are for our mission.”
Choi says she can also be wanting ahead to increasing the laboratory’s collaboration with MIT’s primary campus.
“So many areas, from AI to local weather to area, have alternative for us to come back collectively,” Choi says. “We even have some nice fashions of progress, just like the Beaver Works Middle or the Division of the Air Pressure – MIT Synthetic Intelligence Accelerator program, that we will 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 particular person within the room, and I depend on the good 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 type: Set a imaginative and prescient and targets, and empower and help the individuals I work with to make selections and construct on that technique.”
