RSVP

Is Engineering Education Delivering? The Cross-departmental NEET program at MIT
Amitava (Babi) Mitra, PhD 
Executive Director
New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET)
MIT ​​​​​​​

Engineering education is undergoing great change all over the world and the pandemic has accelerated that process and raised even more questions about its efficacy. This session will discuss the process of implementing transformative educational change in an established institution and will share learnings from the New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) initiative, a pilot program launched in 2017 to reimagine engineering education at MIT.

Biography: 

Amitava ‘Babi’ Mitra, Ph.D. is the founding Executive Director, New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, a certificate program launched in 2017 to reimagine undergraduate engineering education at MIT. He is enthusiastic about implementing transformative ‘start-up’ educational endeavors; he enjoys visioning, formulating, designing, and planning the implementation, and then taking it through to fruition. These include setting up and running educational initiatives within established cultures (as in his current role at MIT, USA) or at start-ups (as founding dean, school of engineering & technology, BML Munjal University, Gurgaon, India).

He has over twenty-five years of experience in institution building, higher education, corporate e-learning, and distance education. He transformed a small e-learning R&D group into the profitable Knowledge Solutions Business at NIIT, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia, USA as its Senior Vice-President. He is a founding member, Board of Governors of an NGO, Pan Himalayan Grassroots Development Foundation, Kumaon, India and as the founding Dean, School of Engineering & Technology, BML Munjal University (BMU), India during 2013-16 he launched ‘Joy of Engineering’, a first-year hands-on course designed to get students engaged with engineering. Mitra is regularly invited to deliver keynote addresses and be a panelist at global conferences focusing on engineering education. He was born in New York City and grew up in India. He enjoys food, music, the intersects across people and technology, growing up with his children and playing squash.

*LInc Talks are open to Faculty members from Harvard and MIT -