Justin Steil
Associate Professor of Law and Urban Planning
Justin Steil is an Associate Professor of Law and Urban Planning and a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow. As a lawyer, a paramedic, and an urban planner, his research focuses on spatial dimensions of inequality. Justin analyzes spatial inequality in the domains of environmental justice, housing and land use policies, and health equity, among others. Recent research on environmental justice focuses on the effects of climate-change-related disasters on renters, including on rents, evictions, and affordable housing production.
Justin is the co-editor of three books: Furthering Fair Housing: Prospects for Racial Justice in America’s Neighborhoods (2021); The Dream Revisited: Contemporary Debates about Housing, Segregation, and Opportunity (2019); and Searching for the Just City: Debates in Urban Theory and Practice (2009).
More information on Prof. Steil can be found on the Department of Urban Studies and Planning website.
Sili Deng
Doherty Professorship in Ocean Utilization, Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Sili Deng joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT as an assistant professor in January 2019. She received her bachelor’s degree in Thermal Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2010 and her master’s and doctoral degrees in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 2012 and 2016, respectively. From 2016 to 2018, Dr. Deng was a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. Dr. Deng received the Princeton Energy and Climate Scholarship in 2013 and the Gordon Wu Prize for Excellence in 2014, both from Princeton University. She also received the Excellence in Teaching Award in 2014 from Princeton University and was one of the five recipients of the Bernard Lewis Fellowship at the biennial International Symposium on Combustion in 2016.
Read more about Dr. Deng on the Deng Engery and NanoTechnology Group website.
David Des Marais
Amgen Career Development Professor
David Des Marais graduated with a BA in Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley in 2000 and a PhD in Biology from Duke University in 2008. He began working at MIT in 2017 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The primary focus of research in the Des Marais Lab is to understand the mechanisms of plant-environment interaction. We use tools from molecular, quantitative, and population genetics to identify the physiological basis of plant response to environmental cues and ask how these mechanisms constrain or facilitate plant breeding and evolutionary change. Des Marais has won the Walter Fitch Prize, Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution, Maseeh Award for Teaching Excellence (2022), NSF CAREER Award (2023), Ole Madsen Mentoring Award (2023), and the SoE Samuel M. Seegal Prize (2025).
Read more about Prof. Des Marais on the Civil and Environmental Engineering website.
John D. Sterman
Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management, Professor, System Dynamics, Director, MIT System Dynamics Group
Sterman’s research centers on improving decision-making in complex systems, including corporate strategy and operations, energy policy, public health, environmental sustainability, and climate change. His work ranges from the dynamics of organizational change and the implementation of sustainable improvement programs to climate change and the implementation of policies to promote a sustainable world. Sterman pioneered the development of “management flight simulators” of corporate and economic systems which are now used by corporations, universities, and governments around the world.
Sterman is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and received an honorary doctorate from the Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland. He has twice been awarded the Jay W. Forrester Prize for the best published work in system dynamics; has won an IBM Faculty Award as well as the Accenture Award for the best paper of the year published in the California Management Review. He received the Best Application Award from the System Dynamics Society for his work on climate change policy. At MIT, he has been recognized with the Samuel E. Seegal Faculty Prize, given to a professor who “inspires students in pursuing and achieving excellence,” the Jamieson Award for Excellence in Teaching, numerous other awards for teaching excellence; and was named one of MIT Sloan’s “Outstanding Faculty” by the BusinessWeek Guide to the Best Business Schools.
Learn more about Prof. Sterman and his research on the MIT Sloan website.
Ishani Saraf
Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society
Ishani Saraf is an Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) at MIT. She studies technoscientific discards and their methodological potential for interpreting social life and political matter. Her current work focuses on the trade and transformation of discarded machines and metal scrap across South Asian and the Indian Ocean spaces, exploring their uncharted transnational routes of circulation, the social worlds they become embedded in, and the novel contexts they in turn generate.
Ishani received her PhD in sociocultural anthropology from the University of California, Davis, and her MA and MPhil in sociology from the Delhi School of Economics. Prior to joining MIT, she was a postdoctoral research associate and lecturer at the University of Virginia. Her research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds Mellon Research Initiative at UC Davis, and other interdisciplinary grants at UC Davis and UVA.
More information on Prof. Saraf can be found on the MIT Science, Technology, and Society website.