MIT Technology Review appoints three new Board members, names two co-chairs

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today MIT Technology Review announced the recomposition of its Board of Directors with the resignation of two long-standing directors, the appointment of three new ones, and the selection of two co-chairs.

The new directors are MIT provost Cynthia Barnhart, the most senior academic officer at the Institute; Lara Boro, chief executive officer of the Economist Group; and Sanjay Sarma, the Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the vice president for open learning at MIT.

Professor Barnhart replaces Martin A. Schmidt, who is leaving MIT to become president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, while Professor Sarma replaces Institute Professor Jerome I. Friedman, who is retiring from the board.

Professor Barnhart and Alan Spoon, a longtime member of the board and an experienced media business executive, will act as co-chairs.

The appointment of Cynthia Barnhart, MIT's newly named provost, to the board ensures that MIT Technology Review maintains its deep connection to the world-leading knowledge and innovation generated by the scholars and professionals in the MIT community.

Lara Boro is leading the Economist Group, best known for its weekly publication, The Economist, through a business transformation focused on profitable growth, content excellence, and brand strength and integrity. Her expertise connects directly to MIT Technology Review's own goals and aspirations.

Sanjay Sarma brings to MIT Technology Review a unique perspective born of academic scholarship, entrepreneurial expertise, and his ten-year leadership of MIT's Office of Open Learning, through which MIT has become a world leader in the field.

MIT Technology Review CEO Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau said, "We are honored that Cindy, Lara, and Sanjay will join MIT Technology Review's Board of Directors. Each of them brings unique experience and insight that will help launch us into a new chapter of commercial growth and journalistic impact."

Cynthia Barnhart, Provost, MIT

Cynthia Barnhart is Provost, Professor of Operations Research, and Ford Foundation Professor of Engineering at MIT. Barnhart has served as MIT's Chancellor, as the Associate and Acting Dean for the School of Engineering, and as co-director of the Operations Research Center and the Center for Transportation and Logistics.

Professor Barnhart's teaching and research are in the areas of large-scale optimization and analytics, with a focus on applications in transportation and logistics systems. She has supervised scores of graduate and undergraduate theses across a range of disciplines and has published widely in the flagship journals of her field.

Professor Barnhart is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS). She has served as the President of INFORMS, the President of the INFORMS Women in Operations Research and Management Science, and the President of the INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics Society. Professor Barnhart's awards include the INFORMS President's Award, the INFORMS Franz Edelman Prize for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences, the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, and honorary doctorates from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the University of Toronto. 

Professor Barnhart received her SM in transportation in 1986 and her PhD in 1988 from MIT.

Lara Boro, Chief Executive Officer, The Economist Group

Lara Boro was appointed chief executive of the Economist Group in September 2019.

Prior to her appointment, Ms. Boro served as CEO of Informa Intelligence, a division of FTSE 100 Informa plc, where she originally joined as Group managing director for the Pharma, TMT, and Transportation Intelligence portfolios in 2014. During her time at Informa, she was a key member of the executive team that turned around the Business Intelligence division and successfully returned it to growth in just 18 months.

Ms. Boro was also CEO International at Top Right Group (now Ascential Plc), where she focused on strengthening the group's footprint across the Middle East, Brazil, and China.

Ms. Boro brings a wealth of experience in business-to-consumer and business-to-business information markets, acquired throughout her career including in senior positions held across CPA Global (now Clarivate), the Financial Times, and MasterCard International.

Ms. Boro is the Senior Non-executive Director at RWS Holdings plc. She holds an MBA from INSEAD and a BSc in Economics and Business from UCLA.

Sanjay Sarma, Professor, MIT

Sanjay Sarma is the Fred Fort Flowers (1941) and Daniel Fort Flowers (1941) Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and the Institute's vice president for open learning.

Professor Sarma cofounded the Auto-ID Center at MIT and developed many of the key technologies behind the EPC suite of RFID standards now used worldwide. He has also been at the forefront of technologies now known as the Internet of Things. He was the founder and CTO of OATSystems, which was acquired by Checkpoint Systems (NYSE: CKP) in 2008. He serves on the boards and advisory boards of edX, Hochschild Mining, GS1, EPCglobal, and several startup companies including TraceLink, IoTask, and Top Flight Technologies, and he advises a number of national governments and global companies. As the head of open learning at MIT, Professor Sarma leads a wide-ranging mission to transform teaching and learning through MITx and MicroMasters® programs, OpenCourseWare, Bootcamps, xPRO, Horizon, the Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab, the MIT Integrated Learning Initiative, the Center for Advanced Virtuality, residential education, and more.

Professor Sarma is coauthor of the award-winning books The Inversion Factor: How to Thrive in the IoT Economy; Grasp: The Science Transforming How We Learn; and Workforce Education: A New Roadmap. He is the author or co-author of more than 200 academic papers in computational geometry, sensing, RFID, automation, CAD, learning engineering, the science of learning and education reform, and is the recipient of numerous awards for teaching and research, including the MacVicar Fellowship, the Business Week eBiz Award, and InformationWeek's Innovators and Influencers Award.

Professor Sarma received his bachelor's from the Indian Institute of Technology, his master's from Carnegie Mellon University, and his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley.

About MIT Technology Review

MIT Technology Review is an independent media company owned by MIT. Established in 1899, it was the first-ever technology magazine; today, MIT Technology Review publishes in multiple digital formats every day, including on our site, in email newsletters, on social channels, and in podcasts. We also produce a multi-award-winning, bi-monthly print magazine and run one of the industry's most highly regarded events brands, EmTech.

Our goal is to become the destination for those seeking to make sense of our technologically driven world.

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SOURCE MIT Technology Review