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 school and employees in the present day, 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 group.
“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} improvement 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 improvement middle operated by MIT for the Division of Protection, the laboratory has offered the federal government an impartial perspective on essential science and expertise problems with nationwide curiosity for greater than 70 years. Distinctive amongst nationwide R&D labs, the laboratory focuses on each long-term system improvement and speedy demonstration of operational prototypes, to guard and defend the nation in opposition to superior threats. In tandem with its position in growing expertise for nationwide safety, the laboratory’s integral relationship with the MIT campus group allows impactful partnerships on basic analysis, educating, and workforce improvement in essential science and expertise areas.
“In a time of nice world 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. “Additionally it is very important that the laboratory apply government-funded, cutting-edge applied sciences to unravel essential issues in fields from area exploration to local weather change. Together with her depth and breadth of expertise, eager imaginative and prescient, and easy fashion, Melissa Choi has earned huge 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 Site visitors Management, Cyber Safety and Data Sciences, Communication Methods, and ISR and Tactical Methods. Participating deeply with the wants of the broader protection group, 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 total profession to Lincoln Laboratory, Choi says her lengthy tenure displays a dedication to the lab’s work and group.
“By means of my profession, I’ve been lucky to have had extremely modern and motivated folks to collaborate with as we clear up essential nationwide safety challenges,” Choi says. “Persevering with to work with such a robust, laboratory-wide workforce as director is without doubt one of the most enjoyable features of the job for me.”
Success by way of 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 Methods and Evaluation Group after which the Lively Optical Methods Group, Choi discovered the worth of pooling experience from researchers throughout the laboratory.
“I used to be capable of shift between quite a lot of totally different tasks very early on in my profession, from radar techniques to sensor networks. As a result of I wasn’t an skilled on the time in any a type of fields, I discovered to succeed in out to the various totally different specialists 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 Site visitors Management Division, which she led from 2014 and 2019. In that position, she helped carry collectively various expertise and human techniques experience to ascertain the Humanitarian Help and Catastrophe Aid Group. Amongst different achievements, the group offered help to FEMA and different emergency response businesses after the 2017 hurricane season brought about unprecedented flooding and destruction throughout swaths of Texas, Florida, the Caribbean, and Puerto Rico.
“We had been capable of 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 essential nationwide issues.”
Outdoors of her technical and advisory achievements, Choi has made an affect at Lincoln Laboratory by way of her commitments to an inclusive office. In 2020, she co-led the research “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 techniques is essential to me,” says Choi, who would be the first girl to steer Lincoln Laboratory. “Everybody ought to have the ability to 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 rather a lot about main by way of adversity.
“We clear up laborious 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 whole 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 growing impactful techniques for NASA and NOAA, Choi not too long ago led the formation of a brand new Civil House Methods and Know-how 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 develop into a giant emphasis for the whole nation usually,” Choi explains. “It appeared like a superb 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 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 discovered from totally different views and management kinds. Sturdy leaders are essential, but it surely’s necessary to acknowledge that the majority of the work will get accomplished by the technical, help, and administrative staff throughout our divisions, departments, and workplaces. Remembering being an early employees member helps you perceive how laborious and thrilling the work is, and likewise how essential these contributions are for our mission.”
Choi says she can also be wanting ahead to increasing the laboratory’s collaboration with MIT’s fundamental 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 Center or the Division of the Air Pressure – MIT Synthetic Intelligence Accelerator program, that we will construct from. Everybody right here may be very enthusiastic about doing that, and it’ll completely be a precedence for me.”
In the end, Choi plans to steer Lincoln Laboratory utilizing the method that’s confirmed profitable all through her profession.
“I consider very a lot that I shouldn’t be the neatest individual within the room, and I depend on the good folks working with me,” Choi says. “I’m a part of a workforce and I work with a workforce to steer. That has at all times been my fashion: Set a imaginative and prescient and objectives, and empower and help the folks I work with to make selections and construct on that technique.”
