Four faculty members in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering have been named to endowed chair and career development professorship appointments.

Jesse Kroll, professor of civil and environmental engineering and chemical engineering, has been appointed to the Peter de Florez Professorship. David Simchi-Levi, professor of civil and environmental engineering and engineering systems, core faculty member of Institute for Data Systems, and Society (IDSS), and the head of the MIT Data Science Lab, has been appointed to the William Barton Rogers Professorship. Franz Josef-Ulm, professor of civil and environmental engineering and faculty director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub received the Class of 1922 Professorship.  Incoming Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Gioele Zardini, who is also principal investigator at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), and affiliate faculty at IDSS, has been appointed to the Rudge (1948) and Nancy Allen Career Development Assistant Professorship. These appointments were made by the provost upon recommendation of the Department Head of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Ali Jadbabaie.

Endowed chair professorships serve as the main mechanism to honor and reward current faculty for their scholarly accomplishments. These appointments represent the highest honor that MIT can bestow upon a faculty member and for its commitment to excellence in teaching, research, and service. The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering now holds 21 endowed chair professorships.

“I am delighted that the Institute leadership has recognized the excellence of our stellar faculty, given the fiercely competitive nature of the professorships at MIT,” says Ali Jadbabaie, JR East Professor and Department Head of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Jesse Kroll, the Peter de Florez Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Chemical Engineering

Professor Jesse Kroll joined the MIT faculty in 2009 after his postdoctoral work at Caltech on the formation of secondary organic aerosol, and his role as a senior scientist at Aerodyne Research, Inc. He became the director of the Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory of Environmental Science and Engineering in 2018. Most recently, he was appointed as co-director of the Climate Project at MIT in the critical mission of removing or storing greenhouse gases that have already been emitted into the atmosphere.

Kroll is a chemist who studies organic compounds and particulate matter in the atmosphere, to better understand how perturbations to the atmosphere can affect air pollution and climate. 

His work is published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and he has received many awards over the years, including most recently the Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring and Commitment to Caring for his exceptional teaching and mentoring.

David Simchi-Levi, the William Barton Rogers Professor in Energy, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Engineering Systems

Professor David Simchi-Levi is a leading expert in supply chain management and business analytics.

Simchi-Levi joined the MIT faculty in 2000 after faculty positions at Columbia University, and Northwestern University. He was the founder of LogicTools which provided software solutions and professional services for supply chain optimization. LogicTools became part of IBM in 2009. In 2012 he co-founded OPS Rules, an operations analytics consulting company, which became part of Accenture in 2016. In 2014, he co-founded Opalytics, a cloud analytics platform company focusing on operations and supply chain decisions that became part of the Accenture Applied Intelligence in 2018.

Among his career achievements, Simchi-Levi was the former Editor-in-Chief of Management Science, one of the two flagship journals of INFORMS. He served as the Editor-in-Chief for Operations Research, another flagship journal of INFORMS and for Naval Research Logistics. In 2023, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering. In 2020, he was awarded the prestigious INFORMS Impact Prize for playing a leading role in developing and disseminating a new highly impactful paradigm for the identification and mitigation of risks in global supply chains. He is an INFORMS Fellow and MSOM Distinguished Fellow and the recipient of many awards.

Franz Josef-Ulm, the Class of 1922 Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Professor Franz Josef-Ulm joined the MIT faculty in 1999 and is credited for his contributions to the nanoscale improvement of concrete and other materials important for the sustainable development of infrastructure and energy. In 2009, he became the faculty director of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub that works with leaders from academia, industry, and government to develop emerging breakthrough approaches for sustainable homes, buildings and green infrastructure.

One of Ulm’s latest research contributions is the development of a new type of concreate that can store energy. He was elected into the National Academy of Engineering in 2022 and has received numerous awards in the field of civil engineering as well as Institute level awards, such as the 2024 Paul Gray Public Service Award for his role in mentoring and supporting students.

Gioele Zardini, the Rudge (1948) and Nancy Allen Career Development Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Assistant Professor Gioele Zardini joins the MIT faculty in fall 2024 from Stanford University where he was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He received his BSc., MSc., and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Robotics, Systems, and Control from ETH Zurich. He spent time in Singapore as a researcher at nuTonomy (then Aptiv, now Motional), at Stanford University working with Marco Pavone, and at MIT in 2020 working with David Spivak, and in 2023 with Munther Dahleh.

His work focuses on addressing the design challenges of complex systems, such as orchestrating networks of autonomous vehicles on the road, designing a spacecraft integrating hardware and software components, or building future mobility systems.

He is the creator of Autonomy Talks (an international seminar series promoting a diverse research exchange on autonomy). He is the recipient of a paper award at the 4th Applied Category Theory Conference and of the Best Paper Award (1st Place) at the 24th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC).