

Help Us Find a New MIT Media Lab Director  - px
http://director.media.mit.edu/

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aaronbrethorst
Funny, I'd just been assuming that Nicholas Negroponte was still in charge
there. Turns out he stepped down 10 years ago[1].

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Negroponte#Later_caree...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Negroponte#Later_career)

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mpk
I assumed the same thing. I bet you read Wired magazine in the 90s too, right?

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aaronbrethorst
Of course! What impressionable, geeky teenager didn't? :)

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naz
Who was the old one? What happened to him or her?

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gsivil
<http://www.media.mit.edu/about/organization>

Frank Moss

More about him on

<http://www.media.mit.edu/people/fmoss>

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gsivil
pg: this could be a job for him

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gsivil
This is the job description:

manage a highly creative, unconventional, and extremely diverse research
organization;

set strategic directions;

raise support from corporations, governments, and philanthropic organizations;

and

serve as the leading public voice for the Media Lab and its vision.

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_delirium
Some of it fits, but the Media Lab also wants cred in academia, and there's
already some feeling that it's a little too commercialized/PR-based. Hiring
someone from Silicon Valley angel-investing culture with no experience in
research is not likely to push that perception in the right direction. A
director not from the research world and without a PhD would also find it
harder to get the professors and researchers in the lab to follow his
direction.

Their main problem is that they really want Negroponte to run it again. ;-)

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frisco
pg has a PhD from Harvard.

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maxawaytoolong
Related, Negroponte does not have a PhD.

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_delirium
True, but he was a professor and/or academic researcher for about 20 years
before founding the Media Lab. Partly it's because he was originally in
architecture, and art/design fields didn't used to insist on professors having
PhDs as strongly as they now do (masters or MFA used to be sufficient, and
MFAs sometimes still are).

