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15News and insights for the MIT Sloan community

MIT Sloan

LeadersTomorrow’s

Today

MIT Sloan Spring 2013

Use your smart device to access MIT Sloan’s home page.

MIT SloanNews and insights for the MIT Sloan communityVol. 9, No. 2

dean David SchmittleinJohn C Head III Dean

senior associate dean, external relations and international programsKristina Gulick Schaefer

managing editorJanel Cunneen

editorial boardCatherine CanneyKristin LeClairKate O’Sullivan

production editorJennifer Montfort

designRobert Beerman, Onward Upward

contributors Amy MacMillan Bankson, Kara Baskin, Zach Church, Bill Doncaster, Mikhail Glabets, Neil Hamberg (for Harvard Business School), L. Barry Hetherington, Rebecca Knight, Andrew Kubica, Rob Matheson, Kathryn O’Neill, Mimi Phan, Ken Richardson, Rebecca Sherman, Alix Stuart, Katie Zorzos

proofreaderLinda Walsh

printingLane Press

MIT Sloan is published by the MIT Sloan Office of External Relations in partnership with the MIT Sloan Office of Communications. Read the MIT Sloan Alumni Magazine onlinemitsloan.mit.edu/alumni/publications/magazine/

Visit the MIT Sloan home pagemitsloan.mit.edu/

Change of addressMIT Sloan Office of External Relations 77 Massachusetts Avenue, E60-200Cambridge, MA 02139 Email: [email protected]

Contacts For subscription information, permissions, and letters to the editor, contact our editorial staff. Phone: 617-324-7408 Email: [email protected]

Social MediaFollow us on Twitter (@MITSloanAlumni) and on Facebook (/MITSloanAlumni) for news and updates from campus and our alumni around the world.

As work on the renovation of Building E52 nears completion, final finishes are made and the new spaces take shape.

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tomorrow’s leaders today

Mental Health Monitoring Goes Mobile: Ginger.io

Urban Impact: Tumml

Funding SaaS Companies with Global Potential:Procyon Ventures

From Microbes to Methane: Kanoot

The First Step to Connected Health: Kinsa

Promoting Mountain Safety: Avatech

Engineering to Improve Healthcare: Andrea Ippolito, SDM ’12

Searching the Physical World: Consumer Physics

Reducing Food Waste:Spoiler Alert

departments

2 Message to Our Alumni

3 Letter from the Dean

4 MIT Sloanscape

10 Reunion Weekend 2015

12 Innovation at Work

41 Class Notes

52 In Memoriam

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Fall 2015MIT Sloan2

M E S S A G E T O O U R A L U M N I

From the Editordear alumni,

As the Director of Donor Relations and Communications, I have the pleasure of meeting and getting to know many of you. It is without a doubt one of my favorite aspects of the job. MIT Sloan alumni never disappoint—they are always instinctively curious, open, and passionate about making a diff erence in the world. We attempted to capture this amazing spirit in this special “Tomorrow’s Leaders Today” edition of MIT Sloan, which highlights a few of the numerous recent alumni who are already improving the world and discovering solutions to tomorrow’s challenges.

As you read through the magazine, you will quickly discover a common theme among the articles—MIT Sloan alumni working to improve the lives of others. From Boston to Beijing, Sloanies are making profound changes across the globe. Closer to home, alumni made an impact last spring when Judy Lewent, SM ’72, challenged the community to sustain the School’s position as one of the world’s leading management institutions by increasing alumni Annual Fund participation from 19 to 22 percent. Sloanies not only rose to the challenge, but also exceeded the goal by contributing nearly $5 million in unrestricted funding for groundbreaking research, student fellowships, and innovative new initiatives and programs that are the hallmark of MIT Sloan. Support of the MIT Sloan Annual Fund ensures that our current and future MIT Sloan student body will experience the same transformative experience that you did.

As you turn each page, I hope you will enjoy discovering some of the amazing leaders who make up our MIT Sloan community. Their drive and desire for a better world are inspiring.

Very best,

Janel CunneenDirector, Donor Relations and CommunicationsOffice of External Relations

MIT Sloan 3Fall 2015

L E T T E R F R O M T H E D E A N

From the Editor

David SchmittleinJohn C Head III Dean

Dear Alumni and Friends, As our students approach the end of the fall semester and prepare for exams, many have had an opportunity to refl ect on their MIT Sloan experiences—rigorous classes and in-depth exposure to emerging research; collaborations with peers; immersion in experiential leadership learning during the one-week Sloan Innovation Period. Now, students’ thoughts turn to next semester and their plans to take advantage of even more unique opportunities. From organizing industry conferences like the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, to participating in one of 15 Action Learning labs, our students’ experiences refl ect the School’s commitment to putting classroom learning to the test in the real world. Action Learning is a clear refl ection of MIT’s educational philosophy, mens et manus.

Throughout their experiences, our students look to the MIT Sloan community members who are defying convention and reimagining tomorrow, as they seek solutions to some of today’s greatest challenges. In this issue of MIT Sloan, we look at a selection of recent alumni, spanning many diff erent industries, who are positively making an impact on the world. You will read how companies like Tumml, co-founded by Julie Lein and Clara Brenner, both MBA ’12, are reimagining the traditional investing world by raising funding for nonprofi ts that are solving today’s greatest urban challenges. Avatech, co-founded by Brint Markle, MBA ’14, developed a tool that could better predict avalanches, and has just released the fi rst crowdsourced mountain safety app. Andrea Ippolito, SDM ’12, is using the skills she learned at MIT Sloan—engineering, systems design, and entrepreneurship—to design the best possible services for veterans and their caregivers in the Department of Veterans Aff airs.

These stories all point toward the transformative impact of an MIT Sloan education. For many, the close collaborations and cross-disciplinary environment they found on campus helped to form the foundations of their new ventures. As you read through our features on “Tomorrow’s Leaders Today,” I hope that you will refl ect on MIT Sloan’s impact on you, and look with pride at the newest generation of MIT Sloan alumni.

Warm regards,

MIT Sloan

M I T S L O A N S C A P E

4 Winter 2015


Class of 2015 Pays It ForwardStudents graduating this spring raised $629,605 in cash and pledges for the 2015 Student Class Gift in support of the MIT Sloan Annual Fund.

As Sloanies prepare to graduate each spring, they pay it forward to future classes by giving to the MIT Sloan Annual Fund through their Student Class Gift campaigns. The Class Gift campaign emphasizes student participation with each gift directly impacting the success of the MIT Sloan Annual Fund.

This spring, the EMBA program again reached 100 percent class participation to attain a new record of $518,665 in gifts and pledges. The MSMS program also reached 100 percent participation—a considerable increase from last year’s rate of 77 percent, raising $2,208. For the MBA/LGO Class Gift campaign, 93 percent of the students participated this year, tying last year’s record and bringing in $74,743. The 2015 Sloan Fellows raised $31,430 and saw their participation rate increase substantially with 53 percent of the class making a gift this year. The MFin program had a participation rate of 21 percent and contributed $2,559.

Alison Riep, MBA ’15, who served as one of the MBA/LGO programs’ Class Co-Chairs along with dedicated volunteers Sam Clark, MBA ’15 and Jason Shapiro, MBA ’15, said, “I’m proud of the MBA/LGO Class of 2015 for demonstrating its support for MIT Sloan by tying the all-time Class Gift participation record. These funds will support the most important initiatives at MIT Sloan that keep our school among the best in the world and ensure that future Sloanies have a life-changing experience—just as I did.”

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MIT Sloanscape

MIT Sloan 5Winter 2015

In the new book Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs, Harvard Business School Professor David B. Yoffie and MIT Sloan Professor Michael A. Cusumano distill three legendary technology careers into a set of rules for corporate leadership in all industries.

Your co-author David Yoffie has been on the board of directors at Intel since 1989. What do you think this access provides to readers of Strategy Rules?

David brings to the book a deep insider knowledge of how [then Intel CEO] Andy Grove made critical decisions at key junctures in the development of the personal computer industry and the Internet. Grove also knew Bill Gates and Steve Jobs very well, and Microsoft and Intel have been close partners since the 1980s, while both companies looked to Steve Jobs and Apple as innovation leaders. So we get to see how Andy viewed the world, through David’s perspective on the board and from our interviews with Andy.

How can leaders focus on these strategy rules without veering too far toward the intense oversight and sometimes explosive anger of Gates, Grove, and Jobs that you recount in the book? Or is it unavoidable?

Gates, Grove, and Jobs all displayed incredible passion for their companies and their industries. At times, yes, they displayed considerable anger. But this comes with passion, which was essential to their leadership style. They were also great teachers, in our view, showing others in their companies what mattered most to the customer and the business. Sometimes this meant they got upset when people didn’t get their vision or got something wrong. Each of them also made mistakes and were not too proud to admit when they were wrong.

As the next generation of technology giants ascends, what should we make of their predecessors? Microsoft, Intel, and Apple are behemoths, but their founders are retired, semi-retired, or have passed away. What lessons did they leave?

Strategy Rules: A Q&A with Michael A. Cusumano

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and

Which technology executives of the next generation of companies do you think are best employing the rules you emphasize in the book?

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, [Chinese Internet company] Tencent, Alibaba, Airbnb, Uber, and several others are all Internet companies whose explosive growth has been driven by network effects and their positive feedback loops.

Their founders all extrapolated from the power of the Internet to see particular possibilities for their companies, and then devised very specific plans to get from point A to point B. We call this “Look Forward, Reason Back.” They all have made some big bets, based on their vision of the future, but without risking everything. They all have built global platforms that allow their companies to expand—exponentially—into new markets and services. They all have demonstrated the use of leverage or cleverness as well as market power. They all have distinctive CEOs and founders who built the companies around their strengths and found partners to balance out their weaknesses. Unlike product companies of previous generations, especially before the personal computer, the founders and leaders of these companies all demonstrate the kind of strategic thinking and management that we talk about in Strategy Rules.

— as told to Zach Church


MIT Sloan


6 Winter 2015


Within a year, his job had shifted. In collaboration with his colleagues, he began leading the company’s social media strategy, at a time when new communication tools like Twitter and Facebook were promising, if fledgling. Today, ESPN takes a cross-platform approach to social media, integrating social elements across all aspects of the fan experience. The company also found early success connecting hashtag campaigns to advertising and live events.

“That’s a shift in fan behavior,” said Shields, “and that’s what we recognized early on as a company, to say ‘Fans are now consuming sports via social media. As a company, we need to be there enhancing their experience in social where they are spending time, while also using social media to make the experience on ESPN platforms even better.’”

Shields’ course, called Social Media Management: Persuasion in Networked Culture, will ask students to answer the same questions he confronted at ESPN. How can social media help companies meet business goals? What new platforms and technologies should companies be using? What—in the fast-evolving industry—will happen next? How can companies employ social media for competitive advantage?

Students will construct case analyses, undertake an “online identity transformation” to construct a personal brand through social media, and conduct a final project on social media innovation. In the project, students will develop

a social media strategy for a small business or startup—their own if they are entrepreneurs—or develop a new social media communication tool from scratch.

“I want our students to think strategically about social media,” Shields said. “There are so many platforms, there’s so much change on a regular basis, and resources are limited. Leaders need a blueprint to navigate the ever-changing landscape.”

Shields is the co-author of two books. The Sports Strategist: Developing Leaders for a High-Performance Industry examines the elements of running a successful sports business without relying on the team always winning. The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace takes a look at marketing strategies to attract, retain, and engage fans.

Shields, who earned his PhD from Northwestern University in 2008, is at work on a new book that will “develop a framework for how leaders and organizations can think strategically about the social media opportunity no matter what the platform is,” he said. At MIT Sloan, he is also teaching Communication for Leaders and Advanced Leadership Communication.

Success, winning, and championshipsThough he is no longer at ESPN, Shields hasn’t left sports behind. A Florida native and a lifelong Miami Heat fan, he said joining MIT Sloan was appealing because of its history in leading sports analytics work. He moderated a panel on Finding the Digital Fan at this year’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference and has led a Twitter chat on sports and social media.

And in Massachusetts, where all four major professional sports teams have won championships in recent years, Shields is working in the same area as the Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots, which he considers leaders in sports business.

“Both teams have enjoyed some success,” he said. “They’ve also had some off-seasons, but no matter what, they are growing as businesses because they realize that it’s more than just wins and losses on the field. It’s about growing a strong brand; it’s about designing a stadium experience that gets people coming back. It’s about building a strong digital and social presence that keeps fans engaged throughout the season. It’s about employing analytics to maximize revenue, ticket sales, and digital consumption and sponsorship.”

“This idea that all you have to do is win to be a successful business,” he said, “that just isn’t realistic.” — Zach Church

faculty spotlight:

Ben Shields brings social media expertise and research from ESPN to MIT Sloan When Ben Shields arrived at ESPN in 2008, he planned to mine research for marketing insights to share with executives at the multimedia sports company.

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MIT Sloan 7Winter 2015

Dean’s Innovative Leader SeriesThrough the 2014 – 15 Dean’s Innovative Leader Series, students gained insight from notable leaders on everything from launching a startup to governing to learning leadership lessons from those who came before you.

“ One of the reasons why I think that MIT has the footprint it does in the innovation space—and this is more kind of a feel—is that it’s a humbler institution. It’s a more modest institution. The reason I think that’s important is because collaboration is critical in the innovation space. Frankly, I think it’s critical in the 21st-century economy.”Deval L. PatrickFormer Governor, Commonwealth of MassachusettsVisiting Innovation Fellow, MIT Innovation Initiative

“ Feedback is a gift; when you get it, probe into it, and ask questions. The power of feedback helps you understand yourself.”Adriane Brown, SF ’01President and COO, Intellectual Ventures

“ Many of the most important principles of leadership are the most simple and timeless. Themes repeat themselves.”Brad Feld, SB ’87, SM ’88 and Charlie FeldManaging Director and Co-Founder, Foundry Group Author, The Calloway Way

Other 2014 – 15 speakers included: Jack & Suzy Welch Former Chairman and CEO, General ElectricFormer Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Business ReviewCo-Authors, The Real-Life MBA(pictured above, center)

Laurent LamotheFormer Prime Minister of the Republic of Haiti

Paul AndersonFormer CEO and Chairman, BHP BillitonFormer CEO and Chairman, Duke Energy

Susan HockfieldPresident Emerita and Professor of Neuroscience, MIT

Kip TindellChairman and CEO, The Container Store Group, Inc.

For more information on the Dean’s Innovative Leader Series, and to read recaps of the speeches, visit mitsloan.mit.edu/alumni/get-involved/for-students/dils/


“ I think if you want to build a company that attracts a lot of great customers, you need to build a unique product that’s very strong. But if you want to pull in the best people and retain them, you need to have a unique, differentiated culture that’s very strong, and I think we’ve done that.”Brian Halligan, SF ’06CEO and Founder, HubSpot

MIT Sloan


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Dedicated MIT Sloan alumni, volunteers, and friends worked throughout the year to carry the annual fund message forward, building momentum for the Lewent Challenge, which was launched in late March and ran through June 30. The Lewent Challenge was issued by Judy Lewent, SM ’72, and her husband Mark Shapiro, who called for alumni to increase their annual fund participation from 19 to 22 percent and offered to give $200,000 to the annual fund when that goal was reached. Lewent fulfilled her generous pledge while participation continued to climb to a new record of 25 percent, bringing to fruition the campaign’s motto, More Impact Together.

“The MIT Sloan Annual Fund fills many gaps, enabling new initiatives to be fully funded,” Lewent said. During the campaign, contributors learned how gifts to the annual fund directly impact MIT

Sloan’s ability to develop programming and remain competitive among business schools by helping the School to:

• Advance global activities, including better Action Learning opportunities for students

• Enhance innovative initiatives to address emerging issues in priority areas such as healthcare, the digital economy, sustainability, finance, and entrepreneurship

• Support students through fellowships that expand the School’s reach for the best and brightest candidates for admission

• Provide faculty with needed support for groundbreaking research projects

Lewent thanked donors and volunteers for helping MIT Sloan exceed this year’s goal for annual fund participation, saying that she hoped alumni recognize how their annual fund support is vital to MIT Sloan’s ability to expand its position as a leading, globally competitive business school.

“The MIT Sloan Annual Fund fills many gaps, enabling new initiatives to be fully funded.” Judy Lewent, SM ’72

Professor Fiona Murray Recognized with CBELast January, Fiona Murray, Associate Dean for Innovation; Co-Director, MIT Innovation Initiative; William Porter (1967) Professor of Entrepreneurship; Faculty Director, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship; and Faculty Director, Legatum Center, received a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) award from Queen Elizabeth II. The honor is in recognition of Murray’s service to the United Kingdom in entrepreneurship and innovation.

Lewent Challenge Inspires Record Alumni Giving Alumni reached a new milestone for giving to the MIT Sloan Annual Fund, helping contribute $4.92M to provide unrestricted funding for groundbreaking research, student fellowships, and new initiatives that fuel the transformative educational experience that is a hallmark of the School. A record number of alumni responded to the Lewent Challenge, increasing overall participation for annual fund giving during the 2014 – 15 academic year from 19 to 25 percent.

V O L U N T E E R S P O T L I G H T

Starting with this issue, MIT Sloan Alumni Magazine will feature one of our alumni volunteers, in their own words.

Name: Natalie Karpov

Program & Year: MBA 2004

Volunteer Position: MIT Sloan Alumni Board member, MIT Sloan Club of NY – MIT Sloan Alumni Board liaison.

Favorite MIT Sloan Memory: Enjoying cultural experiences (and cocktails) with my incredible classmates at weekly C-Functions.

Why I Volunteer: My two years at MIT Sloan were life changing and the most memorable. My MIT Sloan MBA created opportunities for me that I would not have had otherwise. I want to give back to the School by creating a sustainable, long-lasting community for the alums to engage more closely with our alma mater and one another.

Favorite Volunteer Memory: Successful kick-off event of the new MIT Sloan Club of NY. I look forward to seeing many of the NY alums at future club events!

MIT Sloan 9Winter 2015 MIT Sloan 9Fall 2015

Student ConferencesEach year, as part of MIT Sloan’s commitment to management education through real-life experience, student club volunteers plan, promote, and execute industry conferences that aim to provide a forum for experts, researchers, and students to explore the challenges and opportunities business leaders face.

MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference “I don’t know in 20 years who’s going to be the leading

phone or car company or anything else, but I do know the Celtics will be around.”Wyc Grousbeck, CEO of the Boston Celtics, on why smart business decisions can make owning a sports team an even safer bet than the tech industry that has made sustained growth in sports business possible.

Sloan Women in Management: Breaking the Mold

“We think it [implicit bias] is one of the main barriers right now that keeps women from getting to higher positions in leadership. This conference is very focused to be solutions oriented. What we want to do is share and generate ideas for interventions that work to proactively manage the unwanted consequences of implicit bias at both the individual level and the organizational level.”Elena Mendez, MBA ’15, conference co-chair

2014 – 15 student conferences also included:

Hacking Arts

MIT Venture Capital and Innovation Conference

MIT Sloan Investment Conference

MIT Sloan Healthcare BioInnovations Conference

MIT Infinite Labs Tech Conference

MIT Energy Conference

MIT Latin American Conference

MIT Asia Business Conference

MIT Sloan Africa Innovate Conference

MIT Sustainability Summit

MIT FinTech Conference

MIT India Conference

MIT Sloan


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R E U N I O N W E E K E N D 2 0 1 5

Alumni and friends traveled to Cambridge to celebrate

Reunion 2015, June 4 – 7. Alumni participated in workshops

and faculty sessions while enjoying several other activities

including the traditional C-Function, class dinners, the

MIT Sloan Family Barbecue, and much more. Thank you

to the more than 160 Reunion Committee members who

helped build this year’s programming and encouraged

classmates to participate in the MIT Sloan Reunion

Class Gift, raising over $6.3M in gifts and pledges across

the Institute.

1,527 Alumni

and Guests

$6.3M in gifts

and pledges

40Countries

160+Reunion

CommitteeVolunteers

Reunion 2015

MIT Sloan 11Winter 2015Fall 2015 MIT Sloan 11

Understanding the mortgage crisis: the poor are not to blameby Rebecca Knight

I N N O V A T I O N A T W O R K

“The story often told in the media and even in some of the academic literature is that poor and subprime borrowers overextended themselves because money was cheap and credit was easy to come by, and that this group is ultimately to blame for the housing crisis,” she says.

“However, the data doesn’t support that story. In the buildup to the crisis, credit didn’t just expand for the poor; it expanded across all income levels. It’s also not true that the poor drove the spike in mortgage defaults. The percentage increase in mortgage defaults was a much bigger issue for middle- and high-income groups. And since these borrowers hold much larger mortgages, they made up a much bigger fraction of the mortgage dollars in delinquency.”

s economists perform a post-mortem on the housing bubble of 2007 – 08 that led to the Great Recession, one of the dominant

explanations of the crisis is that low-income and subprime borrowers are largely to blame. That narrative goes something like this: In the run-up to the crisis, low-income borrowers took out mortgages at unprecedented rates. All that borrowing sent house prices skyrocketing. When lending slowed, house prices collapsed and low-income borrowers were so overburdened with debt they had no choice but to default on their home loans. The mortgage market crashed and then, of course, the United States entered what is widely considered the worst downturn since the Great Depression.

A

It’s a tidy explanation, but it’s also inaccurate, says Antoinette Schoar, the Michael Koerner ’49 Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. According to Schoar’s new research,* which she conducted with Duke University’s Manuel Adelino and Dartmouth’s Felipe Severino, mortgage originations in the years leading up to the crisis increased for all homebuyers not just for low-income borrowers. On top of that, says Schoar’s team, the portion of defaults and mortgage dollars in delinquency from the lowest income groups fell during the financial crisis, while the portion of defaults and delinquent mortgage dollars from middle- and high-income borrowers rose significantly.

Fall 2015MIT Sloan12

At a time when lawmakers are devising policies to prevent a repeat of the financial debacle, the team’s findings—published by the National Bureau of Economic Research—have important implications. “To date, most of the proposed new rules and regulations have been ‘micro-prudential,’” she says. “This means they emphasize restrictions on debt to income levels, or focus on a lender’s one-on-one screening process of borrowers by, say, making sure banks double-check a borrower’s income, savings, and job stability.”

But to avert a repeat of the financial crisis, regulations also need to address “macro-prudential dimensions,” according to Schoar. “When there is too much leverage and everyone is maxed out, there is potential buildup of systemic risk,” she says. “Regulation needs to ensure there is enough slack in the financial system so that even when house prices drop and defaults increase in unexpected areas, the financial markets are still able to function.”

Using data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), income information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and a

representative sample of all loans in the Lender Processing Services data, Schoar and her team found that between 2002 and 2006 the number of mortgage originations increased proportionally across the entire income spectrum. The size of those mortgage originations increased for both groups, too: for high-income zip codes mortgage amounts rose by about 7.5%, and for low-income zip codes they rose by 7%. Given that the average mortgage for the lowest income quartile of borrower is about $97,000, and borrowers at the top quartile of the income distribution obtain, on average, mortgages of over $250,000, even small increases in mortgage growth for the middle class are enough to make up a larger increase at the low end, according to Schoar.

“This refutes the notion that large distortions in the supply of credit to poor or marginal borrowers set off the housing bubble,” she says. “This was a housing market expansion that everybody participated in.”

Shedding further doubt on the idea that credit to low-income borrowers caused the crisis, Schoar and her colleagues found that middle- and high-income borrowers constituted a much larger

“When there is too much leverage and everyone is maxed out, there is potential buildup of systemic risk.”

Antoinette SchoarMichael Koerner ’49 Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance


share of mortgage dollars in delinquency than poor borrowers. A similar pattern emerged for borrowers with high credit scores. During normal economic times, the mortgage default rate for high credit score borrowers is 1%; for low-credit score borrowers, commonly known as subprime borrowers, the default rate typically hovers at 5%. However, in 2008—as the housing bubble started to burst—the average default rate for subprime borrowers rose to 9%, while the average default rate for high credit score borrowers rose to 4%.

“In other words, what’s different about the crisis is not that defaults became particularly concentrated in low-income or low credit score borrowers, but rather that middle- and high-income households—and middle and high credit score borrowers—significantly increased their share of defaults once house prices dropped,” says Schoar.

The crux of the problem is that the financial system was ill equipped for these groups of people to default. “The banks were caught unaware,” she says. “They were not prepared for middle- and high-income borrowers to default out of necessity, nor were they able to cope with those who strategically defaulted since the value of their asset had fallen so dramatically.”

This is why more macro-prudential regulations are needed, she says. “The crisis was not brought about because a specific set of borrowers—in this case the lower income group—was disproportionately over-levered,” she says. “The issue was that systemic risk was building up across the whole income distribution, since a larger set of people were borrowing up to their maximum debt capacity. So once the economy slowed, defaults occurred in unexpected places.” ...*Loan Originations and Defaults in the Mortgage Crisis: The Role of the Middle Class; Manuel Adelino, Antoinette Schoar, Felipe Severino; NBER Working Paper re-issued March 2015.

“What’s different about the crisis is not that defaults became particularly concentrated in low-income or low credit score borrowers, but rather that middle- and high-income households—and middle and high credit score borrowers—significantly increased their share of defaults once house prices dropped.”

Antoinette Schoar


MORE IMPACT

TOGETHER

mitsloan.mit.edu/alumni/lewent-challenge

#LewentChallenge

SLOANIES, WE DID IT!Thanks to your support of MIT Sloan’s Annual Fund, the Lewent Challenge was a success!

We eclipsed our goal of 22% participation in the MIT Sloan Annual Fund with 25% of MIT Sloan alumni making More of an Impact Together.

Judy Lewent, SM ’72, and her husband, Mark Shapiro, gave their generous $200,000 Challenge gift in recognition of this record-breaking achievement!

Because of your generosity, the MIT Sloan Annual Fund raised a record $4.92M, which means MIT Sloan can:

compete among business schools in attracting top student talent,

expand the School’s network of Action Learning Labs,

invest in programs and courses to address emerging ideas and technologies,

fund groundbreaking research projects developed by faculty,

build the MIT Sloan student and alumni network, and

ensure that today’s MIT Sloan students experience the transformative education that you did!

THANKS TO YOU — WE DID IT!

Startup Ginger.io analyzes smartphone data to remotely predict when patients with mental illnesses are symptomatic.

Mental health monitoring goes mobile

B G I N G E R . I O

Anmol Madan, SM ’05, PhD ’11

ginger.io

@ginger_io

@anmol_madan

By Rob Matheson


emergency room. But with the app, a nurse could call and remind the patient to continue taking medication.

In a recent trial at the University of California at Davis, the app was used as a low-cost method of monitoring youth with psychosis. “Early intervention in psychosis is crucial,” Madan says, “but it requires expensive, intensive patient assessment and monitoring.”

Ginger.io, on the other hand, can be used to collect data and, potentially, prompt early intervention of symptomatic patients to prevent relapses, improving outcomes and reducing costs. The data provided by Ginger.io in this study was used to model daily fl uctuations in patient symptoms, and results indicated that Ginger.io is a feasible platform for monitoring those with early psychosis.

CATCHING DEVIATIONS To use the Ginger.io app, patients fi ll out a brief survey about their conditions, treatment, and healthcare provider. The app then begins passively collecting millions of interaction and location data points. Motion data is captured by a phone’s accelerometers. Global positioning systems pinpoint where a person visits. It also logs the duration and frequency of phone calls and texting patterns—though it ignores information about whom a patient contacts.

For a few days, the app records a person’s normal patterns. After that, algorithms look for signifi cant deviations; if there are any, the app spells them out on the screen. A text may read, for instance, “On Wednesday, you spoke with two fewer people” (signaling isolation), or “You traveled 50 percent less on Thursday” (signaling lethargy).

If the algorithms detect enough deviations to determine that “the patient is behaving in a way that’s inconsistent with usual,” Madan says, it alerts the healthcare provider via Ginger.io’s web platform. The provider may see a text readout explaining, for instance, that the patient is increasingly acting isolated or lethargic.

Smartphones produce signifi cant behavioral data— such as location, calling and texting records, and app usage—that map out a user’s daily patterns. Finding signifi cant deviations in these patterns may signal that something’s amiss, says Ginger.io CEO and co-founder Anmol Madan, SM ’05, PhD ’11.

“If someone is depressed, for instance, they isolate themselves, have a hard time getting up to go to school or work, they’re lethargic, and don’t like communicating with others the way they typically do,” Madan explains. “Turns out you see those same features change in their mobile-phone sensor data in their movement, features, and interactions with others.”

That’s the concept driving Ginger.io’s recently released commercial app, based on years of MIT Media Lab research, which is becoming increasingly popular in the healthcare industry. By passively analyzing mobile data, the app can detect if a patient with mental illness— such as depression, anxiety and bipolar disorders, or schizophrenia—is acting symptomatic.

Symptoms may include lethargy (decreased movement captured by motion sensors) or infrequent texts (captured by the message log). If the app detects an unusual pattern, it sends text messages to both the patient and his or her healthcare provider, who can keep tabs and intervene if necessary.

Currently, the app is being used by thousands of patients at more than 40 healthcare institutions and academic centers across the United States, driving several thousand alerts in the past few months.

It has also been used in research. At the University of California at San Francisco, for instance, the app is being used to look at the role behavioral data plays in heart disease. And with Forsyth Medical Center in North Carolina, Ginger.io is studying how data can help discern behavioral diff erences in diabetes patients. If a diabetic patient becomes depressed, for example, she may stop taking medication—something called “noncompliance” —which could lead to costly visits to the doctor or

Behavioral health analytics startup Ginger.io sees smartphones as “automated diaries” containing valuable insight into the mental well-being of people with mental illnesses.

Currently, the app is being used by thousands of patients at more than 40 healthcare institutions and academic centers across the United States.


Winter 201518 MIT Sloan18

Or they may see a green box next to the patient’s name turn to red, signaling a need for intervention.

“In most of those cases, the institutions have already set up care-management programs and teams responsible for keeping people healthy, so when they get the alert, they call and see what’s really going on,” Madan says. “Then, they make that decision of having the patient come in to see a doctor or handle the issue over the phone.”

A major aim of Ginger.io, Madan says, is to use such “big data” analytics to move healthcare toward preventive measures—intervening before patients end up in emergency rooms, running up medical bills. “Acting on that information while it’s still the right time, when patients can correct their behavior, could certainly change the way we deliver care,” Madan says.

FROM THE LAB TO “THE TRENCHES”The core technology for Ginger.io is based on research by Madan; Alex “Sandy” Pentland, the Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, who cofounded the company and now serves as an advisor; and several colleagues in the Human Dynamics Lab. They spent years experimenting with “reality mining”: applying algorithms to mobile data to see how people move, behave, and—potentially—spread disease. Shifts in how people use their phones and where they travel, they found, can reflect the onset of a cold, anxiety, or stress.

Eventually, that research sprouted some interesting findings about how people with depression behave when they’re symptomatic, Madan explains. “I realized this was something that could find meaning beyond the 80 people in my study; it could have significant impact on the way we think about healthcare. That was the driver to start a company,” he says. Madan and Pentland soon recruited a third co-founder, Karan Singh, MBA ’11, now Ginger.io’s head of sales and marketing, to help grow the business.

At the time, Madan had already dabbled in MIT’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, having previously entered the $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, which helped him “get over the hump” of building a business by teaching him how to create a business plan.

Taking classes at the MIT Sloan School of Management—such as 15.390 (New Enterprises)—and chatting with mentors from the Venture Mentoring

Service and the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship further helped Madan and Singh understand the nuances of building a startup, including recruiting talent, engaging early customers, speaking with investors, and scaling the product.

“After testing the entrepreneurial waters, these resources and classes were fundamental for me personally to make the transition from researcher to entrepreneur,” Madan says. “They provided me with the rich information and network required to be successful.”

Today, Ginger.io has offices in San Francisco and Cambridge, with 50 employees with expertise in clinical studies, data science, user-centered design and implementation, and is poised to grow significantly. It recently won the inaugural HX360 Innovation Challenge at HIMSS, and has $20M in Series B Financing led by Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and True Ventures. In the past five years, Madan says, there’s been an explosion in sensing data (such as wearables), accompanied by a massive shift in the healthcare system to focus on keeping patients healthy.

“There’s a movement in bringing sensors and new technologies into the clinical workflow, so healthcare providers can have access to real-time information and react in a timely manner,” he says.

The startup is working “in the trenches,” as Madan likes to say, seeking ways to broadly implement its technology. This involves training healthcare providers in using the technology and finding how best to manage interventions. Madan says: “We’re looking to really scale through the healthcare system in the next couple of years.” ...This article was originally published by the MIT News Office on July 16, 2014.

Fall 2015Fall 2015MIT Sloan18

Ginger.io’s algorithms sense deviations and send notifications to both patient and healthcare providers.

Winter 2015

B T U M M L

Julie Lein, MBA ’12

Clara Brenner, MBA ’12

www.tumml.org

@Tumml

/sanfranciscotumml

Want to shake up the investing world? Try funding companies that aim to solve the world’s most intractable urban problems, like poverty, social inequalities, and traffi c jams—and then look for fi nancial returns.

By Alix Stuart


Urban Impact

MIT Sloan20 Fall 2015

Between their first and second years at MIT Sloan, friends Julie Lein and Clara Brenner, both MBA ’12, realized that government and nonprofits weren’t the only organizations tackling community problems like homelessness, hunger, and transportation shortages. Each of them took summer jobs with entrepreneurial startups aiming to make the world a better place: Lein at Revolution Foods, which serves healthy school lunches, and Brenner at Fundrise, a crowdfunding platform for local real estate investments.

“These companies were addressing challenges that we really cared about, and they were also scaling really rapidly in a way that traditional community organizations usually just don’t do,” says Brenner. That made the two friends wonder why so few of their business school peers were starting similar companies, even though “many were incredibly community-minded and thoughtful people.”

Coming back to campus for their second year, the duo envisioned the idea of “urban impact startups” and launched an independent research study from MIT Sloan’s Entrepreneurship Lab on why they were scarce. “It was very helpful to be part of an entrepreneurial community as we thought through these issues,” Brenner says of the E Lab. Faculty members Joost Bonsen of the MIT Media Lab and Bill Aulet, managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, were particularly supportive.

Fast forward through months of interviews and quantitative analyses, and access to capital emerged as a major obstacle. “It was pretty clear that startups focused on civic and government issues were underfunded, and they weren’t getting enough funding from traditional investors when first starting out,” often because those investors had no experience with community-focused ventures, says Brenner.

Thus was born Tumml, Yiddish for “shake up,” notes Brenner, now CEO of the organization, “since we like to think of ourselves as shaking up city living.” Since launching in 2013, the accelerator—technically a 501(c)3 charitable organization backed by prestigious partners such as Blackstone Charitable Foundation—has fielded over 650 deals and invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in urban-focused startups. The program has graduated 23 startups, including HandUp, a funding platform to help homeless people; Chariot, a crowdsourced commuter shuttle service; and KidAdmit, a common application tool for preschools. Nine new firms entered the program in June 2015.

Like many accelerator programs, Tumml offers startups both capital and coaching. Each company that is selected receives a $20,000 investment in exchange for a 5% equity stake or convertible debt. The company’s founders then work out of Tumml’s San Francisco offices for about four months while participating in a structured curriculum designed to strengthen their business and fundraising skills. At the same time, the founders meet with mentors such as executives from Yelp, Lyft, and Airbnb who can help them work through the patchwork of legal and political hurdles that most face. The meetings range from brown bag lunches to one-on-ones. Mentors “might even sit in on some sales calls,” says Brenner. “It’s very hands on.”

The criteria for Tumml’s investments start with growth potential. “First and foremost, we’re looking for strong businesses, because if you’re not a strong business,

82% of the companies Tumml has supported have a woman or person of color on their founding team, despite the fact that Tumml does not explicitly look for those criteria.


you won’t be around to do good for anyone,” says Brenner. The investees are a combination of for-profi t enterprises, public benefi t corporations, and hybrid organizations. The twist is that a startup’s potential to improve a community is equally important. “Our goal is to seed the market with good ideas and to serve as beacons for other entrepreneurs, to see you can be successful in this space,” says Brenner.

One such beacon is Oakland, CA-based The Town Kitchen. Co-founder and CEO Sabrina Mutukisna used to split her time between helping San Francisco at-risk youth stay in school and running a cupcake bakery. Now, she’s hiring low-income youth to make and deliver gourmet boxed lunches to local businesses. Others include specialized employment technology and services, such as LinkedIn-like WorkHands for blue-collar workers, transportation and parking solutions, and even a data analytics company, Valor Water, that helps water utilities better address problems like local droughts.

Besides inspiring entrepreneurs, Brenner and Lein also aim to catalyze more investors to consider the “urban impact” space. “We want to serve as a market signal that these are investable companies providing real community benefi ts,” Brenner says, noting that the 23 program graduates have gone on to collectively raise $25 million beyond their initial investments from Tumml. Some notable success stories include Chariot’s $3 million seed round that included established funds such as SoftTech VC in April 2015 and HandUp’s $850,000 seed round, with participation from well-known angel investors like Marc Benioff , in July 2014.

The two-and-a-half year-old portfolio even boasts one exit, the September 2014 acquisition of Hitch by Lyft for an undisclosed sum. That was “great news for urban innovation, [because] it is now clear that you can have a traditional exit that also advances an important social mission,” the Tumml blog noted on the announcement. As a 501(c)3 organization, Tumml currently relies on philanthropic giving to fuel its investments, but Lein and Brenner are hoping that returns from exits will eventually be a sustainable way to supplement their charitable funding base.

A welcome side benefi t of investing along the urban impact theme is extraordinary diversity. By Brenner’s count, 82 percent of the companies Tumml has supported have a woman or person of color on their founding team, despite the fact that Tumml does not explicitly look for those criteria.

So far, no fellow MIT Sloan alumni have come through the accelerator. But Lein and Brenner hope that will change soon. The two have come back to The MIT Sloan Women in Management conference (which they ran together as second-years) as well as the MIT Sustainability Summit to spread the word about combining business and social mission. “Sloanies are such forward-thinking people; we’d love to get more of them thinking about starting urban impact startups,” Brenner says. ...

“ ”Our goal is to seed the market with good ideas and to serve as beacons for other entrepreneurs, to see you can be successful in this space.— C L A R A B R E N N E R

Venture fund will open doors to Asian markets for big data, machine learning, and IT infrastructure companies.

MIT Sloan Fall 201522

With Procyon Ventures, MIT Sloan grad funds enterprise SaaS companies with global potential

B P R O C Y O N V E N T U R E S

Millie Liu, MFin ’12

www.procyonventures.com/

@MITMillieLiu

www.linkedin.com/pub/millie-liu/2b/b1a/917

By Zach Church

MIT SloanFall 2015 23

Millie Liu, MFin ’12, said Procyon Ventures is interested in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies working on analytics, big data, and machine learning, as well as the IT infrastructure to back it up, such as databases, data processing, security applications, and networking. Some startups Procyon invests in, such as Seven Bridge Genomics—which builds an IT backend platform with analysis applications for genome sequencing—work in several of these areas.

Procyon, based in Cambridge, was founded in February 2014 and made its fi rst investment that April. Today, it has invested in eight companies. The fi rm off ers seed, Series A, and Series B funding. First checks range from $50,000 to $500,000 with follow-on investment for future rounds.

Procyon has a broad investment theme with a focus on startups with potential to grow globally, particularly in China, a market Liu knows well. The fi rm, she said, helps companies make connections and fi nd the customers they need in markets that may be unfamiliar to them. Liu recalled her time working at a venture-backed enterprise SaaS startup that struggled to secure customers when it fi rst arrived in China. She felt the fi rm’s investors should have worked harder to help develop connections and customers for the company.

“I realized there are a lot of problems with U.S. companies getting into the global market, especially with a diff erent culture,” she said. “It’s not because we don’t have the technology. It’s just because of that one missing link of someone being that bridge. That served as inspiration later on for the fund.”

For companies like Cambridge-based Seven Bridges Genomics, she said, China is the largest market in the world. Customers could include Chinese mega-sequencers, which serve most of the world’s top pharmaceutical companies.

The fi rst company Procyon invested in, Infi nite Analytics, is a predictive analytics company based in Cambridge. Co-founder and CEO Akash Bhatia, MBA ’12, said the access to the Chinese market Procyon provides is extremely valuable to his company. He also praised Liu’s guidance and work ethic.

“Procyon is extremely committed to us,” he said. “Millie and Procyon’s venture partner Drew Volpe have been involved in interviewing key hires, providing a global perspective in our decision-making and Series A fundraising strategy. It’s the informality of working with her as well as her availability at any given time. Whether it’s in the middle of the day or evening, Millie is available to bounce off ideas, solutions, or even strategic decisions.”

Procyon is not location biased. One company in its portfolio—Contastic, which develops customer relationship management software—was founded in Cambridge before moving to Silicon Valley. But Liu said Procyon set up shop in Cambridge because the Boston area is rife with the “deep tech” talent and expertise that drive the companies it is investing in.

“I basically came to the United States for MIT,” said the China native. “This is like the fi rst home for me, so personally it makes a lot of sense. It’s also great that with Harvard, MIT, and other schools in the area, it’s just a huge factory feeding all these talents.”

When Liu fi rst arrived at MIT Sloan in 2011 from the private equity industry, she was considering a career in trading. But her interest in startups grew through working with startups, working with venture capitalists, and organizing the MIT-China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum. She founded a company that uses social media data to track and minimize news latency for fi nancial market events. Faculty members such as Professor Ed Roberts, founder of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, and former MIT Sloan entrepreneurship professor Howard Anderson also provided a mentorship as Liu developed Procyon Ventures.

“In a way, I totally got brainwashed by MIT,” she said. “But in a good way.” ...

A recent MIT Sloan Master of Finance graduate is helming one of the newest venture capital fi rms in the Boston area, investing in big data and IT infrastructure companies with the potential to expand into global markets.

The firm helps companies make connections and find the customers they need in markets that may be unfamiliar to them.


From microbes to methane

All over the world, landfi lls overfl ow with garbage, leaching untreated toxins into the environment. MIT Sloan student Tristan Jackson’s ambition is to neutralize much of that waste—and generate renewable energy—through his startup, Kanoot.

B K A N O O T

Tristan Jackson, MBA ’15

Anass Afilal, MFin ’14

kanoot.co

[email protected]

by Kathryn O’Neill

MIT Sloan 25

“Most of the landfi lls in the developing world receive and store waste, but do not process or eliminate it,” said Jackson, MBA ’15. Kanoot sells a mix of microbes capable of digesting organic toxins and producing useful outputs, such as methane fuel.

While still in the early stages of development, the company is in negotiations with a landfi ll in Panama to use Kanoot’s technology to boost methane production for a planned 8.1 megawatt gas-fi red electrical generator. “Kanoot microbes can boost methane production between 20 percent and 300 percent depending on the exact composition of the waste,” Jackson said. “This project will stop millions of gallons of toxic sludge from contaminating the surrounding area, greatly reduce atmospheric methane emissions, and produce megawatts of renewable energy.”

Jackson dates his passion for tackling environmental problems to his childhood in Maine, when he lived on a tiny island without grid electricity or running water. “I could see changes taking place in the [ocean] water that surrounded us, and I began to think I wasn’t doing enough to provide solutions to the larger problems facing humanity,” he said.

“I felt compelled to take a higher level role. That’s why I decided to come to MIT,” Jackson said. “I wanted to work internationally and push forward solutions to the related issues of how we handle and view waste, along with wastewater, and how we produce our energy and our food.”

Jackson applied to MIT’s Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship and won a two-year fellowship based on his proposal for building a business supplying anaerobic waste management systems, known as biodigesters, to the developing world. “I was looking at Latin America, at remote coff ee farms as sites where I would want to bring [in] low-cost energy [systems] … that would help villages be self-suffi cient and be more resilient to changing conditions,” he said.

After gathering expert advice on campus—including from Senior Lecturer Jason Jay, director of the Sustainability Initiative at MIT Sloan; Senior Lecturer Bill Aulet, managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship; and judges and mentors in MIT business plan competitions—Jackson decided that it wasn’t feasible to build a business selling expensive hardware in rural, developing communities. The team explored selling biodigesters to U.S. dairy farmers, but again ran into diffi cult economics. Building small-scale biodigesters was proving cost prohibitive.

Fall 2015

Instead, Kanoot set out to fi nd big-budget customers with large waste problems, such as landfi ll operators. The team plans to design and build systems to treat landfi lls with microbes, then sell microbe powder to landfi ll operators. According to Jackson, their proprietary microbe mix has been verifi ed in independent third-party tests as the most eff ective remediation product on the market. Kanoot can currently deliver 10 tons of EPA-approved microbe powder per week—enough to treat 2 million square feet of landfi ll surface area and turn millions of gallons of toxic sludge to harmless omega-3 fatty acids and renewable energy.

Kanoot was incorporated in April 2014, and Jackson credits MIT with helping him pull all the pieces of the business together. Jackson met two of his three co-founders through the Legatum Center: Anass Afi lal, MFin ’14, another Legatum Fellow who is now Kanoot’s chief fi nancial offi cer, and Bill Baird, an engineer with 30 years of experience using microbes to break down toxins, whom he met through Frontier Markets Compendium founder John Kornet, a fellow attendee at a Legatum Center conference. The third co-founder, Mike Cassata, is an MBA graduate of Babson College.

Kanoot has also performed well in MIT business competitions, winning $5,000 in the 2014 MIT IDEAS Global Challenge and being named a semifi nalist for the 2014 MIT Clean Energy Prize. “The competition system at MIT is great,” Jackson said. “The prize is nice to have, but you gain a whole lot from the process whether or not you win.”

The company’s next goal, Jackson said, is to raise funding for a pilot project that can serve as proof that their microbal solution will work on a large scale. “We hope to complete a pilot in Panama soon, or possibly at a landfi ll in Morocco. Recent results from lab tests using our microbes on landfi ll leachate in Morocco are very promising—researchers at the University of Oujda [in Morocco] have found that our microbes accelerate gas production fi vefold, which means they can greatly increase the value and viability of making energy from municipal waste,” he said. ...

The team plans to design and build systems to treat landfills with microbes, then sell microbe powder to landfill operators.


First step to connected health? A smart thermometer.

By Kathryn O’Neill With a burgeoning company, one alumnus wants real-time health information in the hands of consumers.

B K I N S A

Inder Singh, MBA ’06

kinsahealth.com

@kinsa

/kinsahealth

kinsahealthbytes

kinsahealth


At the same time, Singh found himself increasingly frustrated at work. Although he had succeeded in brokering deals that saved nearly $1.5 billion in drug costs for developing nations, he was vexed by how diffi cult it was to fi ght diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria with extremely limited information on how and where infections were spreading. What was needed, as he saw it, was a way for people to share their knowledge to fi ght disease.

So, Singh teamed up with inventor and technologist Edo Segal, a father of small children who was similarly frustrated by the lack of information available about the spread of disease. Together, the two invented Kinsa’s fi rst product—a fl exible, battery-free thermometer that plugs into a smartphone for power and interactivity.

Singh said they chose to develop a thermometer because “the fi rst device people go to in order to confi rm illness is the thermometer. We’re piggybacking off that common behavior and expanding what people get from the device.” The associated app enables users to log symptoms and share information with contacts so that they can see at a glance, for example, that a stomach bug is going around their child’s preschool.

The idea took off , and to date the company has sold more than 20,000 of its $29.99 stick thermometers and plans to unveil an ear thermometer within the next few months.

The company is also proving to be a success with investors. In December, Kinsa announced it had raised $9.6 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufi eld & Byers,

“ ””MIT Sloan”MIT SloanFall 2015”Fall 2015

At Kinsa, we’re working on what I believe is the biggest issue in healthcare: stopping the spread of disease.— I N D E R S I N G H

Inder Singh, MBA ’06, is looking forward to the day when anyone can tune into a health report for up-to-the-minute news on what colds, fl us, and other contagious diseases are circulating nearby.

To get there, in 2012 Singh founded Kinsa, a company creating and selling smart thermometers that not only take temperatures, but also enable users to monitor symptoms and medications, keep records for the doctor, and connect with others to see what illnesses might be going around their neighborhood or school.

“For the fi rst time in history, we will have a system to track the spread of disease—what I like to call the ‘health weather,’ a real-time understanding of what’s going on,” Singh said. Aggregated, anonymized health data from the associated Kinsa smartphone app will provide a leading indicator of the spread of illness.

“At Kinsa, we’re working on what I believe is the biggest issue in healthcare: stopping the spread of disease,” Singh said. “The mantra of healthcare is early detection, early response. These connected devices will allow for much earlier detection, and that will transform the way healthcare services are delivered.”

Long interested in improving the health of people worldwide, Singh came up with the idea for Kinsa while working as executive vice president of the Clinton Health Access Initiative in 2011. He was home sick with a nasty bug, and after eight straight days of high fever, he sought help online. “I thought I had some common contagious disease, so maybe somebody else had it, too,” he said. He was shocked to discover there appeared to be no way to determine if others in his area were experiencing similar symptoms. “I thought, ‘I live in this very connected world … but I have so little information about the health situation around me,’” he said.

Winter 201528 MIT Sloan28

FirstMark Capital, Andy Palmer, and others. “We’ve got some killer health and tech investors. They believe not only in our mission, but also in our business model,” Singh said.

A graduate of MIT Sloan and the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program in 2007, Singh said the network of contacts and the credentials supplied by MIT have proved crucial to his company’s success. “That and my work at Clinton are why I’ve been able to scrape and paw and pull together people to do this,” he said. Kinsa currently has 12 employees in New York City and will soon open an offi ce in San Francisco.

The other reason Kinsa is succeeding, according to Singh, is that it is dedicated to improving the health of people—not just in the United States but all over the world. “We built a business model that we hope can achieve a broad social mission, not the other way around,” he said. “That’s been something I’ve dedicated my life to, moving the levers of capitalism and fi nding similar incentives to achieve social change.”

Singh said he hopes that within fi ve to ten years Kinsa will be giving all its thermometers away for free. This past winter, Kinsa launched a 20 school beta program called

FLUency to provide free thermometers to all families at participating schools in an eff ort to combat the spread of fl u. The beta program fared so well—some schools had participation rates as high as 96 percent—that Kinsa is planning on rolling it out on a much larger scale this fall.

Also slated for launch in the fall is Kinsa’s second thermometry product, an infrared ear thermometer. Targeted for use with infants and toddlers, the thermometer takes a one-second temperature reading and works with Kinsa’s app.

Once the company is no longer monetizing the hardware, Singh said the plan is to make money by connecting ill people to necessary services. For example, Kinsa could partner with drug companies to speed the delivery of medications or with doctors to enable quick consultations.

One day, the company might even team up with news outlets to provide the “health weather” report. As Singh discovered when he got sick back in 2011, “People want to know if there is a high level of illness going around.” ...

Fall 2015

To date the company has sold more than 20,000 of its $29.99 stick thermometers.

“ ”We built a business model that we hope can achieve a broad social mission, not the other way around.— I N D E R S I N G H

MIT alumni seek to change the way people communicate and share information by building the first crowdsourced mountain safety information platform.


Proactive tools and an innovative app platform promote mountain safety

B A V A T E C H

Brint Markle, MBA ’14

Jim Christian, SM ’14

www.avatech.com

@avatechsafety

/avatechsafety

Avatechsafety

By Zach Church

In 2010, Brint Markle’s friend was nearly killed in an avalanche in Switzerland. The pair were skiing diff erent routes down the backside of Mont Fort. Markle, by luck, avoided the avalanche.

His friend was carried several hundred yards by the sliding snow and was nearly pushed over a set of cliff s. He survived and skied out, shaken.

“It was a classic example of ability over education,” Markle, MBA ’14, said. “We had more abilities than we did knowledge of the snow and avalanche safety. Bluebird day. Lots of powder. And we said, ‘Let’s go for it.’”

“That was not only a wakeup call, but also got me thinking about what happened that day, what went wrong, why we made the decisions we made, and whether there could be anything out there that could prevent something like that from happening,” he said.

Today, Markle is the CEO of Avatech, a new company started initially to help avalanche experts such as forecasters, guides, and ski patrol at resorts—and eventually expert skiers—better assess snowpack conditions and the risk of a slide. He believes avalanche safety starts with understanding snowpack and preventing avalanches before they occur.

Avalanche deaths in the United States have spiked since the mid-1990s. Recent years have seen as many as 36 people killed over a single winter, compared to annual numbers usually below 10 through the 1970s. Markle attributes the rise to greater interest in backcountry sports and easier access to backcountry terrain.

Experts incorporate a variety of measurements and observations when determining the likelihood of a slide. Currently, assessing avalanche risk involves digging a snow pit and searching for weak layers of snow. Avalanches most often occur when a layer of heavy snow settles on a weak layer. When the underlying layer is disturbed, the top layer loosens and slides downhill.

Avatech began with the Avatech SP1, a smart snow probe designed to quickly evaluate snowpack to aid in the risk assessment process. Designed as a collapsible metal

pole with a small computer on the head consisting of a few buttons and a display, it looks like a small piece of survey equipment, rugged yet built for precise science. The probe sends the data it collects to a crowdsourced database, Avanet, for real-time reporting and analysis via the Avanet Mobile app.

TESTING NEW TECHNOLOGYWITH LEADING PROFESSIONALSFrom the start, it was important that Avatech sold and tested its fi rst units to ski and snow professionals. “What we tell the pros is that it’s no substitute for experience or judgment,” Markle said. “It doesn’t make the decisions for you. But it helps make the picture clearer. Snowpack characteristics can change dramatically over small amounts of terrain. The way we evaluate snow today, with a single snow pit, we extrapolate in a sometimes faulty way that the information holds true over larger distances than we should.” Avatech’s probe, Markle said, can pick up weak layers as little as a few millimeters thick.

During the 2014–15 season, the team engaged the professional community and worked with over 500 elite professional organizations from over 30 countries, including the United States, Canada, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, and Switzerland. The SP1 and Avanet have been used by major ski resorts, including Breckenridge in Colorado, Jackson Hole in Wyoming, and Park City in Utah, as well as by guiding companies and forecast centers. Markle said testers examined technical accuracy, design and user interface, and durability.

“It’s really just the right approach of soliciting a ton of feedback before product launch and getting the prototypes into a lot of professional hands,” Lazar said. The strategy worked out, as Avatech won the Top 100 Innovation of the Year and Gear of the Year awards. Buoyed by this success, they moved on to develop the SP2, which features an enhanced user interface and a more durable design.

THE AVATECH TEAMThe Avatech team, which includes Co-Founder & VP of Product, Jim Christian, SM ’14, has grown to a staff of 15 and has shifted its focus in the past year to the development and testing of a new crowdsourced platform

MIT Sloan30 Fall 2015“ ”We realized this community innately wants to help one another, and wants everyone to make safer decisions.— B R I N T M A R K L E


for broader mountain safety, Avanet, a version of which will launch for public use this fall.

“The SP1 is an incredible tool that helps us gather a very specifi c type of information,” notes Markle. “Our customers loved using the SP1 this past season and started asking us to help them share many more types of broader mountain safety information spanning avalanches, weather, mountain hazards, and more.”

Recognizing the diffi culty of sharing real-time information in the mountains, Avanet aims to put data in the hands of the people that need it the most; users can share information about weather conditions, snow conditions, snowpack tests, wind, and avalanches along with photo, video, and audio and even send local notifi cations of dangerous observations that happen near you in real-time. Combined with data from the SP2, the result is a robust platform that improves mountain safety for all. Markle said he was blown away by the support and adoption from the professional community in the fi rst year. “90 percent of our professional users shared their observations with the whole professional community,” says Markle. “We realized this community innately wants to help one another, and wants everyone to make safer decisions.”

The Avanet web and mobile app will be available for professionals as well as recreationalists this fall, featuring advanced route planning, terrain analysis, and real-time local safety notifi cations. The professional network will remain robust, with more advanced data and features available to its users, as well as a separate public network for recreational users.

The app’s launch will be a culmination of a process that began during Markle’s fi rst weeks at MIT Sloan in the fall of 2012. He arrived on campus intending to start a company that traded on his passion for outdoor sports. He attended the t=0 entrepreneurship festival, which “got light bulbs going left and right.” He began to think about mountain safety, toyed around with the idea of a product based on radar, connected with engineers at Draper Laboratory for a brainstorming session, and signed up for Product Design and Development, a class that

partners MIT Sloan students with students from MIT engineering and the Rhode Island School of Design.

“I feel fortunate to be part of such a special and diverse team with a terrifi c group of advisors and investors behind us,” Markle said. “Everyone dreams big, is passionate, and brings such diff erent skills to the table. I’m learning something new every day.”

The Avatech co-founders applied and were accepted to the MIT Global Founders’ Skills Accelerator, a program that provides money, workspace, a board of advisors, and mentorship to burgeoning MIT startups. Markle credits the attention from the accelerator’s demo day with helping to raise a $575,000 seed funding round. He also started spending time at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, where he worked with mentors and faculty members who started successful companies of their own.

“They had our backs the entire way,” Markle said. “It’s amazing to have just an idea and then to have that level of support. You don’t have funding at that point. You don’t have your team built out. You don’t have anything. And yet the team at the Trust Center dives in right there with you and says, ‘What can we do to help?’”

Trust Center managing director Bill Aulet said he prepared Markle for the discouragement that can come with creating a product for a niche market, but was struck by Markle’s commitment to using every available support to refi ne Avatech’s product and business plan. While Avatech started out small in the avalanche world, it seems they are poised now to have a much broader impact than they initially imagined.

“It’s a classic story of using the resources at MIT,” Aulet said. “It’s a platform where he could go and learn at a very, very rapid pace. I don’t think there’s any place in the world where you could learn as much as Brint learned from so many diff erent people.” ...

Rapid observations and red flag analytics

Route planningand mobile tracking

Terrain analysisand visualization


B S M A R T S C H E D U L I N G

Andrea Ippolito, SDM ’12

innovation.va.gov

whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/05/29/accelerating-development-new-technologies-veterans

Engineering to Improve Healthcare

You’re sick and you’re scared. So you visit the doctor—who has 15 minutes to spare. You want more answers, but there just isn’t enough time.

By Kara Baskin

MIT Sloan 33

Sound familiar? Healthcare engineer Andrea Ippolito, SDM ’12, thinks so, too. She uses engineering to tackle large-scale logistical problems, like making it easier for patients to secure doctor’s appointments.

“My goal is to energize the health-tech ecosystem through engineering. I want to change the way we architect our healthcare, and there’s a hunger for improvement,” she says.

Ippolito is an innovator who is working to improve healthcare through engineering, systems design, and entrepreneurship. At MIT, she’s served as a co-director of MIT Hacking Medicine, where the team has held over 20 hackathons to crack medical problems like these across the world. Her own startup, Smart Scheduling, emerged from a Hacking Medicine event. Smart Scheduling now has paired with athenahealth to develop software that takes the guesswork out of patient scheduling. It tracks patients to remind them of appointments and predicts future scheduling behavior, maximizing a busy doctor’s time.

Today, it’s a struggle for patients and physicians alike. “The current payment delivery model for doctors is fee-for-service,” she explains. “Even though doctors are trying their hardest, volume has to be the focus in order to keep their practice up and running. It’s not patient-centric.” Hence the hurried, dreaded 15-minute appointment.

“Right now, it can be frustrating for patients to get quick access to an appointment, or often patients experience long wait times. Our goal at Smart Scheduling is to fi nd holes in the clinician’s schedule and schedule patients close to cancellations, so that the clinician can see someone else who needs care that day,” she says. “Ultimately, it’s about providing that really good same-day and next-day access that every patient wants.”

Fall 2015

To that end, Ippolito has also explored ways to capitalize on new modalities of healthcare delivery to improve access to care. She’s worked closely with the U.S. military to help design a telehealth system for service members coping with post-traumatic stress disorder. The system enables patients to consult with a doctor remotely to connect a clinician in Alaska with available appointment slots to a patient in Dallas, Texas. They provide reassurance to patients—and extra bandwidth for doctors.

Thanks to Ippolito’s innovative approach, she was named recently by the White House and the General Services Administration as a Presidential Innovation Fellow. This year, she’s harnessing that creativity once again, working with the Department of Veterans Aff airs in Washington, DC. The yearlong program pairs external innovators with government agencies to spearhead special projects.

“The Presidential Innovation Fellows are trying to infuse the VA with the same energy you see outside government to fuel the development of more modern, better products for veterans,” she says.

“My goal is to energize the health-tech ecosystem through design thinking and engineering. I want to change the way we architect our healthcare, and there’s a hunger for improvement.”

That’s where she comes in: Ippolito and the team at the VA Center for Innovation have launched an Innovator’s Network to build the innovation muscle of the VA to develop the best possible services for Veterans and their supporters. VA employees from diff erent disciplines and backgrounds can collaborate to solve new problems, like designing ways to personalize assistive technologies and prosthetics for Veterans faced with disabilities.

“This challenge is just like a hackathon,” she says. “Right now the VA’s tools are all there. The plane parts are all in the hangar. It’s all about someone coming in and asking, ‘Why isn’t this possible?’”

Thanks to Ippolito’s work, it is. ...This article originally appeared in the Spring 2015 issue of MIT Spectrum.

“ ”Fall 2015”Fall 2015

I want to change the way we architect our healthcare, and there’s a hunger for improvement.— A N D R E A I P P O L I T O


Consumer Physics launches handheld spectrometer to analyze chemical makeup of physical objects

Alumni led SCiO searches the physical world

B C O N S U M E R P H Y S I C S

Dror Sharon, MBA ’06

www.consumerphysics.com/myscio/

www.facebook.com/pages/mySCiO/837006732994076

@my_scio

www.youtube.com/channel/UCBzlFg1Sd8IpcN6j5G_Ltlw

By Bill Doncaster

MIT Sloan 35

your garage has degraded before you fi ll the tank in your lawnmower.

It claims 99 percent accuracy, and becomes stronger with use as the data it draws from online grows. Sharon envisions a community of SCiO users uploading information and creating a global database.

In an age where new tech innovations tout Star Trek levels of “wow” almost daily, SCiO has already proved to be a noteworthy standout. A Kickstarter campaign sought to raise $200,000, and surpassed it by $2.5 million with a tidal wave of international press coverage.

Sharon has almost no advice on how to garner such attention to other entrepreneurs. He credits his team with “fl awless execution,” but says that “as with any startup, seven out of 10 success factors were out of our hands. We were really lucky.”

“It is like holding on to a rocket ship going from zero to 1,000 miles per hour in two seconds,” he said. “We launched, and the action kept me awake for 48 hours straight. I slept for two hours in the car outside the offi ce that night and went back to monitor the progress with the team.”

“It was an exhilarating experience, especially since we really did not know what would happen once our project manager pressed the ‘publish campaign’ button,” he said.

The big prize for Consumer Physics and SCiO, however, was successfully reaching their true Kickstarter target: building an avid user and application developer community. More than 1,000 people bought SCiO

The world’s search engines provide an overwhelming amount of instantaneous information, but for Dror Sharon, MBA ’06, and the company he co-founded, it’s just not good enough. Consumer Physics, Inc., based in Tel Aviv, Israel, where Sharon serves as CEO and “Chief Happiness Offi cer,” recently launched SCiO, which promises fast information about the physical things that surround us with specifi city the Internet cannot provide

The size of a fl ash drive, SCiO is a handheld optical sensor that can read the chemical makeup of the things around us. Sharon describes information from search engines as “cumbersome” and envisions SCiO as a practical tool to extract useful information from objects and materials in real time.

“If you want to know when to water the basil plant growing in your window, there is no way for Google to answer you,” Sharon said. “It can provide an answer to the question, ‘How to take care of basil?,’ but that is a generic answer. It is not about the actual ever-changing physical world around us.”

SCiO uses near-infrared spectroscopy, technology in use for decades in laboratories. Spectrometers measure and analyze light that has been bounced off objects. Each type of molecule vibrates in a distinct way, creating a unique optical signature when interacting with light. Those signatures can be observed and measured. Consumer Physics’ innovation is in shrinking the technology in size and aff ordability, and in combining it with smartphone applications to compare spectrometer results with online databases for real-time analysis and information.

Some examples of SCiO’s prospective use include determining the fat or sugar content of foods, measuring the hydration level of plants, and tracking changes in substances over time, such as the life cycle of home-brewed beer. It can tell the diff erence between olive oil and sesame oil, and can determine if the can of gas in

Fall 2015

Some examples of SCiO’s prospective use include determining the fat or sugar content of foods, measuring the hydration level of plants, and tracking changes in substances over time, such as the life cycle of home-brewed beer.

development kits to help build useful applications and strengthen the data SCiO draws upon to deliver information.

Sharon said that despite potential in the medical fi elds, SCiO is not being marketed as a medical device. While accurate in identifying compounds that make up one percent of a material or substance, that’s just not accurate enough in applications where trace elements can pose hazards, as with food allergies.

“The potential applications there are still unclear and will require a lot of future work to develop,” Sharon said. “If and when medical-grade applications are developed, we feel confi dent that the impact on our understanding of the human body will be greatly enhanced due to the accessibility and pervasiveness of the device.”

Sharon co-founded Consumer Physics in Israel in 2011 with Damian Goldring, who holds a PhD in electronics and electro-optics from Tel Aviv University. Sharon

began thinking of developing a sensor company while in an Innovation Teams course at MIT Sloan, looking at a sensor being developed at the MIT Materials Science and Engineering Department. While he felt that technology wasn’t ready for commercialization, the experience has proven invaluable.

“The MIT Sloan experience made a big contribution to my thinking on patent issues and technology commercialization, and provided valuable frameworks,” he said. “My time at MIT had a big impact on my decision to start a company. It’s an amazing hub of technology entrepreneurs. It’s not just exposure, but real interaction with role models deeply engaged in solving tough problems.” ...


“ ”The MIT Sloan experience made a big contribution to my thinking on patent issues and technology commercialization, and provided valuable frameworks.— D R O R S H A R O N

MIT Sloan 3737

Spoiler Alert matches surplus food inventory with those in need.

Fall 2015

New app designed to reduce food waste

B S P O I L E R A L E R T

Emily Malina, MBA ’15

Ricky Ashenfelter, MBA ’15

foodspoileralert.com

Foodspoileralert.com

@myspoileralert

@theminimalina

@ashenfelter

By Amy MacMillan Bankson

Picture pallets of vegetables lingering in a grocery store’s back room. Turnover in the produce section is slow, and there is no room on the shelves. The vegetables are still edible, but will most likely be sent to a landfi ll, according to Emily Malina, MBA ’15 and Ricky Ashenfelter, MBA ’15.

But now there’s an app for that. Spoiler Alert, which was founded by Malina and Ashenfelter last year, will address food waste issues by helping organizations and companies manage their surplus food and organic waste by connecting them with organizations that can use them.

With the Spoiler Alert app, the store with the surplus vegetables can post what is available, and nearby food rescue organizations can respond and pick up the food in time to provide the still-fresh items to people who could use them.

“It is designed to seamlessly connect all aspects of the food supply chain,” Ashenfelter said. The app is available through the Apple App Store, and businesses can sign up on the company’s website. The team is working on a web version and a version that will be compatible with Android devices.

Eight Massachusetts-based food organizations—retailers, manufacturers, distributors, and food recovery nonprofi ts, including the Greater Boston Food Bank—took part in a pilot program, which ran from January

through March. According to Malina and Ashenfelter, about 8,000 pounds of food were posted for donation.

The Bon Appétit Management Company, which supplies food to fi ve residential dining halls at MIT, also took part in the pilot. Claire Cummings, who is the waste specialist at Bon Appétit, said the pilot was an achievement.

“Spoiler Alert has brought fl exibility and reliability to our food recovery program at MIT,” Cummings said. “The app has the potential to enable chefs and catering managers to easily communicate what is available for donation and when it’s available, which addresses some of the most diffi cult logistical barriers to food recovery.”

Now that the pilot is complete, Ashenfelter and Malina plan to release the app beyond Boston and start raising capital. Spoiler Alert was selected for two accelerator programs—MassChallenge in Boston and FOUNDER.com, both of which kicked off in June.

ENTREPRENEURIAL INSPIRATIONPrior to management school, both Ashenfelter and Malina worked for Deloitte, but they didn’t meet until an MIT Sloan event in 2013. They discovered many shared interests and both pursued course off erings from the Sustainability Initiative at MIT Sloan and the Entrepreneurship & Innovation MBA Track. During their fi rst year at MIT Sloan, they explored issues of food waste in classes taught by Professor Ed Roberts and Senior Lecturer Bill Aulet, and took advantage of resources at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship.

Ashenfelter said the MIT ecosystem has been “phenomenal” for the pair. Jason Jay, director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, has been an early and vocal supporter of the startup, which has placed in several national pitch competitions. Malina said an entrepreneurial marketing class taught by Aulet;

MIT Sloan38 Fall 2015“ ”Spoiler Alert has brought fl exibility and reliability to our food recovery program at MIT.— C L A I R E C U M M I N G S , W A S T E S P E C I A L I S T A T B O N A P P É T I T M A N A G E M E N T C O M P A N Y


HubSpot co-founder Brian Halligan, SF ’05; and Kayak co-founder Paul English also provided inspiration. MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service has also been a great resource in developing the business, Malina said.

WASTE NOT, WANT NOTThe need for an app like Spoiler Alert seemed obvious to Malina and Ashenfelter. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that 14.5 percent of American households experienced “food insecurity” in 2012, meaning they could not always be sure where they would get their next meal.

At the same time, Americans throw out a third of their food annually, said Ashenfelter and Malina. Grocery stores and other businesses are often unsure of how to donate extra food, and many don’t realize that liability protections are in place via a Good Samaritan law, according to Ashenfelter.

Malina described Spoiler Alert as technology that creates new connections and enhances existing relationships, all in an eff ort to improve effi ciency and reduce the amount of food going to waste. “Users can quickly post what they have, notify our network of recipients, and confi rm discounted food sales and food donations, all in real time,” Malina said.

The app is free for organizations that wish to donate food. Spoiler Alert will eventually feature a subscription-based model for other users.

If food does spoil, it can potentially be converted into fertilizer or other products. On October 1, 2014, a commercial food waste disposal ban went into eff ect in Massachusetts, meaning any entity that has at least one ton of organic waste per week will have to donate or re-purpose the useable food, according to the Massachusetts Executive Offi ce of Energy and Environmental Aff airs. The remaining waste would have to be shipped to the likes of an anaerobic digestion facility, a composting operation, or an animal feed operation.

Malina and Ashenfelter are excited about this new development, and plan to integrate it into Spoiler Alert’s off erings. “There are a lot of diff erent uses for food, depending on its quality and geography,” Ashenfelter said. “When we think about the food recovery hierarchy, feeding people is at the top, and as you move down, it’s animals, industrial uses, and compost. But the end goal is to keep as much of it out of the landfi ll as possible.” ...

“ ”Users can quickly post what they have, notify our network of recipients, and confi rm discounted food sales and food donations, all in real time.— E M I L Y M A L I N A

Read more about Spoiler Alert:Fortune.comfortune.com/2015/05/01/how-tech-can-stop-the-looming-food-crisis/

Slice of MITslice.mit.edu/2015/05/26/an-app-that-can-fight-hunger/

| 1956 | 1961 | 1966 | 1971 | 1976 | 1981 | 1986 | 1991 | 1996 | 2001 | 2006 | 2011 | 2015 |

Reunion2016

June 2–5

Join us for Reunion Weekend June 2–5, 2016.Reconnect with friends, faculty, and the MIT Sloan community.

Come back to Cambridge to visit with classmates, enjoy social activities, network with fellow alumni, and hear the latest from MIT Sloan faculty in special classroom sessions throughout the four-day event.

Interested in volunteering for your Class Reunion Committee? Email: [email protected]

For more information visit:mitsloan.mit.edu/alumni/reunion-2016

#SloanieReunion

MIT Sloan Fall 2014

C L A S S N O T E S

52

I N M E M O R I A M

In MemoriamWith deep sadness, the MIT Sloan School of Management reports the recent passing of fellow alumni.

1937 Mr. Walter T. Blake, SB August 28, 2014

1938 Mr. Richard Muther, SB October 15, 2014

1945 Mr. Edgar C. Ahlberg, SB September 7, 2014

1946 Mr. George S. Ahmuty, SB January 24, 2015 Mr. C. Townsend Wilson, SB January 1, 2015

1947 Mr. M. Allen Dickson, SB October 17, 2014 Mr. Matthew B. Harrington, SB September 23, 2014 Dr. Melvin E. Salveson, SM September 2, 2014 Dr. Edwin M. Wilson, SB December 30, 2014

1948 Dr. Armand V. Feigenbaum, SM November 13, 2014 Mr. Robert F. Lewis, Jr., SB November 12, 2014

1949 Mr. Donovan R. Beachley, Jr., SM March 4, 2015

1950 Mr. Robert E. Lavender, SM October 9, 2014

1951 Dr. Harold J. Cleary, SB November 13, 2014 Dr. George B. Coale III, SB January 22, 2015 Mr. Allen F. Moore III, SB October 16, 2014 Mr. Jay Rosenfield, SB October 26, 2014

1953 Mr. Martin Sack, SB November 24, 2014

1954 Mr. Michael S. Ariens, SB February 28, 2015 Mr. David B. Whelpley, SB January 17, 2015

1955 Mr. Robert D. Allen, SM January 17, 2015 Mr. Elmer W. Crouthers, SB September 7, 2014 Mr. Robert A. Sherman, SM March 7, 2015 Mr. Peter Wallack, SM February 10, 2015 Mr. Edward J. Ward, Jr., SM September 7, 2014

1956 Mr. Lloyd D. Brace, Jr., SB August 21, 2014

1958 Mr. Larry M. Andrews, SB December 25, 2014

As of March 31, 2015

1959 Mr. William B. Finneran, SB November 30, 2014 Mr. Jack M. Fischer, SB March 26, 2015 Mr. H. Follett Hodgkins, Jr., SM September 7, 2014 Mr. Howard E. Kaepplein, SB September 3, 2014 Mr. Robert G. Kelm, Jr., BO December 2, 2014 Mr. Harold E. Jandebeur, SB February 10, 2015 Mr. Alan W. Sampson, SM November 19, 2014

1961 Mr. Sheldon L. Epstein, SB November 10, 2014 Mr. John C. Erickson, SM December 28, 2014 Mr. Elmer N. Lenk, SM October 3, 2014

1962 Dr. Martin C. Anderson, PHD January 3, 2015 Mr. Stephen K. Whittemore, SB October 18, 2014

1963 Mr. James K. Bakken, SM November 26, 2014 Mr. William E. N. Doty, SM December 29, 2014 Mr. Melvin C. Seibel, SM January 21, 2015 Mr. Robert G. Wick, SM February 14, 2015

1964 Mr. Joseph W. James, SM December 17, 2014

1965 Mr. B. R. W. William Powlett, SM August 7, 2014 Mr. Fritz T. Wegmann, SM August 26, 2014

1967 Mr. Gordon S. Cochrane, SM January 23, 2015 Dr. E. Gerald Hurst, Jr., PHD January 15, 2015

1970 Mr. William B. Bullock, SM January 29, 2015

1974 Mr. Jerome A. Halperin, SM February 10, 2015

1989 Mr. Alexander E. Clelland, SM December 4, 2014 Dr. Stephen N. Gerson, SM September 21, 2014

1997 Ms. Barbara S. Wheat, SM December 1, 2014

1998 Mr. Jake Peterson, MBA August 25, 2015

2000 Mr. Yoshiaki Baba, MBA January 15, 2015

2012 Mr. Edward Alfano, MBA May 25, 2015

2013 Ashleigh Royalty Range, MBA July 19, 2015

MIT Sloan Fall 201552


1920 Mr. Ralph R. Larsen, BO March 10, 1988

1921 Mr. Odd Juel, SB July 10, 1974

1940 Mr. Laur Don Wheaton, BO May 21, 2014

1948 Mr. John W. Lebourveau, SM January 17, 2014

1949 Mr. Peter D. Fisler, SM February 14, 2008

1950 Mr. Richard H. Fitzpatrick, BO March 16, 2008

1952 Mr. Edward J. Duggan, MO February 28, 2014

1956 Mr. Oswald Newell, Jr., SM April 1, 2013

1957 Mr. James R. Connell, SM October 10, 2013 Mr. Thomas P. Hackney, Jr., BO February 24, 2009

1966 Mr. Michael W. Hilton, SM April 30, 2009 Mr. Mayer E. Wantman, SM October 12, 2002

1967 Mr. Michael J. E. Frye, SB February 21, 2012

MIT Sloan was saddened to learn recently of the passing of the following alumni.


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Enroll today in one of our many short courses and learn to solve the challenges most critical to you and your organization. MIT Sloan alumni receive 20% off any open enrollment program held in Massachusetts. executive.mit.edu/sloanalumni

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Every quarter, you’ll receive an email alerting you to the new MIT Sloan Management Review digital edition. Read each issue on your desktop, tablet or smartphone, or download it for later. You’ll have access to all content found

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critical business insights. Tell your colleagues about us, or join us yourself for

one of more than 40 short courses.

Enroll today in one of our many short courses and learn to solve the challenges most critical to you and your organization. MIT Sloan alumni receive 20% off any open enrollment program held in Massachusetts. executive.mit.edu/sloanalumni

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MIT SLOANinternet of thingsinternet of thingsINFINITE OPPORTUNITIES TOGETHER

Date TBDSan Francisco, California

April 27, 2016Boston, Massachusetts

mitsloan.mit.edu/alumni/events/2015-mit-iot-series

Join us for an interactive panel discussion on the Internet of Things and its impact on business, the economy, and everyday life.

#MITIoT

The Internet of What?Far faster than we realize, the objects around us are being embedded with sensors and intelligence that let them talk to one another, make decisions, and talk about us. The next tech wave isn’t just an economic battlefield—it’s a revolution likely to touch every American personally.

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