NEWS BRIEFS
Dean of School of Architecture and Planning steps down
Yesterday, Adèle Naudé Santos, dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) announced her intention to step down and return to faculty, effective at the end of the Spring semester. Santos is a professor in both the Department of Architecture and the Department of Urban Studies (DUSP), as well as a practicing architect with her own architecture studio in San-Francisco, Santos Prescott and Associates.
During her ten-year tenure as dean, Santos worked to consolidate the School of Architecture into two central locations, overseeing renovations in MIT’s Main group and a crucial fundraising campaign for the Media Lab. Santos also worked to increase the visibility of the School and made several high-profile hires for the department.
Suggestions for the next dean of SA+P can be sent by email to sap-search@mit.edu or by letter to Room 3-240.
New incoming director of Beaver Works
Effective February 1, Robert T-I. Shin ’77, current division head of the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) and Tactical Systems Division at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, will assume the role of Director of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Beaver Works Center. Shin will also be a member of the MIT School of Engineering Extended Engineering Council.
Beaver Works, located at 300 Technology Square, was established in November 2013 as a joint research laboratory by the Lincoln Laboratory and the School of Engineering. The space is operated by Lincoln Laboratory and provides space for students, faculty, and researchers from MIT and Lincoln Laboratory to collaborate on research projects.
Course 1 professor wins prestigious NSF award
Pedro Reis, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering has won a 2014 Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation’s Structural Mechanics and Materials program, according to the MIT News Office. The award is the NSF’s most prestigious award for assistant professors early on in their career.
Reis is the Principal Investigator in the Elasticity, Geometry, and Statistics Laboratory, where research focuses on understanding the mechanics of thin objects and structures. With the Early Career Award, Reis, will continue the research in his “Smart Morphable Surfaces for Aerodynamic Drag Control” project, with the goal of developing a new class of Smart Morphable Surfaces that can acquire reversible and on-demand customizable typography, according to his award abstract. Applications include radomes (domed structures that protect radars), wind turbine towers, automobiles and aircraft structures.
—Deborah Chen