MIT Media Lab Celebrates 40 Years of Innovation
By David E. Shaw
Over the past several days, we celebrated the MIT Media Lab’s 40th anniversary with technologists, scientists, artists, and other creative thinkers from around the world. The gathering honored four decades of discovery while exploring an equally compelling question: How can technology help shape a better human future?
As part of the celebration, Executive Director Jessica Rosenworcel reviewed the Lab’s accomplishments and priorities for its next chapter, including several new high-profile collaborations and a $40 million anniversary fundraising campaign. A highlight was her conversation with internet pioneer Vint Cerf , exploring the evolution of global connectivity and the responsibilities that come with shaping its future.
David Shaw with Jessica Rosenworcel
As a globally renowned pioneering interdisciplinary research community and home to a graduate program at MIT, the Media Lab brings together art, science, design, and engineering to create technologies, experiences, and systems that help people reimagine their lives. Its strength lies in connecting people and ideas across disciplines—and creating opportunities for discoveries that might otherwise never happen.
My involvement with the Media Lab deepened in 2023, when then-Director Dava Newman appointed me to its Advisory Council. I have since been working with Jessica Rosenworcel on the Council’s future plans. In 2024, MIT President Sally Kornbluth appointed me to the MIT Corporation’s Visiting Committee for Media Laboratory / Media Arts and Sciences, which provides advice and oversight for the Lab and its academic program.
It is an honor to serve in these capacities at a global powerhouse of innovation. My relationship with MIT began decades earlier, when my friend Bill Pounds , former dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management, accepted my invitation to join the board of IDEXX Laboratories, which I founded in 1983. I subsequently became a frequent guest lecturer at Sloan, with teaching engagements extending as far as Fudan and Tsinghua universities in China.
Later, as a trustee and treasurer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) I had the privilege of serving alongside distinguished leaders with MIT connections, including former MIT President Susan Hockfield; Nobel laureate Phillip Sharp, founding director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research; and Gerald Fink, former director of the Whitehead Institute. As chair of The Jackson Laboratory, I also had opportunities to collaborate with MIT colleagues including Eric Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute, and Frank Moss, former director of the Media Lab.
These relationships have enriched my appreciation for MIT’s combination of intellectual ambition, creative exploration, and commitment to impact. As the Media Lab enters its next chapter, I look forward to helping sustain that spirit—and turning bold ideas into meaningful benefits for people and the planet.