Eugene Fitzgerald is the Merton C. Flemings SMA Professor of Materials Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Fellow in the Singapore-MIT Alliance. Prof. Fitzgerald is Founder and Board Chairman of Innovation Interface. Building upon his early experience at AT&T Bell Labs, he has created and led a series of fundamental innovations, from early technology to final implementation in the market. He received a BS degree in Materials Science and Engineering in 1985 from MIT and his PhD in the same discipline from Cornell University in 1989.

Andreas Wankerl is Operations Director of the Innovation Interface. He conceptualized its beginnings and co-founded its precursor, the Business of Science and Technology Initiative at Cornell University. The Innovation Interface works with corporations on innovation processes and innovation projects at the corporate/university interface. He received his BS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Cornell. After four years of managing international sales and customer relations in the semiconductor equipment industry, he returned to Cornell to earn his MBA and to start what has become the Innovation Interface with both Cornell and MIT.

Arne Hessenbruch is co-founder and partner of Muninsight, an advisory company specializing in state-by-state differences in US energy markets. He has written on innovation in the context of long-term (decades) development of markets, and on innovation and hype. He received an MS degree in Physics from the University of Freiburg, and a PhD in History of Science from Cambridge University.

Jessica Sandland is a principal lecturer in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), where she leads online learning initiatives-- developing massive open online courses (MOOCs), collaborating with faculty, researching best practices in online learning, and designing blended learning experiences for the MIT community. She has overseen the development of a wide variety of DMSE’s online courses, including 3.086x (Innovation and Commercialization), 3.032x (Mechanical Behavior of Materials), 3.024x (Electronic, Optical, and Magnetic Properties of Materials), 3.15x (Electrical, Optical and Magnetic Materials and Devices), and 3.054x (Cellular Solids).

Jessica is one of the co-founders and leads of the MICRO program, whose mission is to provide a remote research and education experience for engineering undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds. She also serves as a senior member of Open Learning’s Digital Learning Laboratory. Her current research interests include the utility of peer review in open online courses and the use of humor in MOOCs, and she’s received awards for Best Paper in ‘20 and ‘22 for her contributions to the IEEE LWMOOCs Conference. Jessica also received the 2019 MITx Prize for Teaching and Learning in MOOCs and was a finalist for the 2019 edX prize. Jessica holds a Ph.D. in electronic materials from MIT.