Dr. Moser to serve on SDM leadership team and oversee quality of education and research
Bryan Moser has been named academic director and senior lecturer for MIT System Design & Management (SDM). Moser has been lead instructor and a member of SDM’s core faculty since 2013, along with Professor Edward F. Crawley, Professor Olivier L. de Weck, and Dr. Bruce G. Cameron. This team of faculty recently won MIT’s 2017 Teaching with Digital Technology Award.
“As a distinguished researcher, a superb educator, and an industry practitioner highly recognized for his contributions to diverse and technically complex projects, Bryan will be invaluable in helping SDM and MIT continue to be at the forefront of interdisciplinary research and education,” says Joan S. Rubin, executive director of SDM. “We are thrilled that he is joining the SDM leadership team.”
In the past, Moser has taught leadership development in MIT’s Technology and Policy Program (TPP). He currently serves as associate director of MIT’s Strategic Engineering Research Group and is a project associate professor at the University of Tokyo and director of its Global Teamwork Lab.
Moser earned his doctorate at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, where he was mentored by Professors Fumihiko Kimura and Hiroyuki Yamato. He researched the dynamics and coordination of complex, global engineering projects.
Moser has more than 26 years of industry experience around the world in technology development, rollout, and sustainable operations in aerospace, automotive, heavy machinery, transportation, energy, telecom, and global services. His research focuses on developing high-performance teams for technically complex projects through the design of socio-technical systems.
“Because SDM students are already accomplished professionals when they matriculate, SDM faculty are required to have deep, relevant, and recent industry experience as well as cutting-edge research expertise in global leadership, teamwork and complex product development,” says Steven D. Eppinger, SDM industry co-director (management) and General Motors Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management. “Bryan brings experience, expertise, and vision that will greatly enhance SDM’s already rich classroom exchanges.”
“Bryan’s track record of innovation in on-campus and distance education, coupled with his research and his commitment to the Institute, will benefit the SDM program’s industrial collaborators as well as our SDM students,” adds Warren Seering, Weber-Shaughness Professor of Mechanical Engineering and SDM co-director (engineering). “We are pleased that he will be an integral part of the SDM leadership team and help us evolve SDM’s pedagogical and research agendas.”
A long record of service to MIT
Beginning with his early academic years at MIT, Moser has had a long record of service to the Institute. He believes strongly in the engagement of scientists and technologists in public life.
As an undergraduate, while a student in Course 6 (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science), Moser twice served as president of the MIT student body and was subsequently awarded the Karl Taylor Compton Prize for outstanding achievements in citizenship and devotion to the Institute’s welfare.
As a graduate student he was selected as a Hugh Hampton Young (HHY) fellow. The award not only recognizes academic achievement, but also exceptional personal and character strengths, with heavy emphasis on the perceived overall potential of the candidate to have a positive impact on humanity. Today Moser serves as a trustee of the HHY Council, selecting fellows each year.
When he received his master’s degree from TPP, Moser was also awarded the MIT Alumni Award for Excellence in Technology and Policy.
A career distinguished by innovation and excellence
Moser was one of the first foreign engineers hired by Nissan Motors to work in its Oppama, Japan, factory and Central Research Labs. There he applied artificial intelligence to computer-aided design, multi-objective optimization, and robotic control problems. He later worked at United Technologies Corporation (UTC), where he established the company’s first technology and research center in Asia. He received UTC’s Outstanding Achievement Award for building the organization as well as UTC’s collaboration with industrial partners, universities, and national R&D programs across Asia.
In 1999, he founded Global Project Design (GPD), a company that brings system thinking, model-based project management, and teamwork design tools to complex engineering projects. GPD is still active today in the United States, Japan, and Germany.
Moser says he has been guided throughout his career by the MIT seal and motto. “The craftsman and the scholar, demonstrating “mens et manus” (mind and hand), are a necessary combination to stimulate discovery, rigor, and practicality which yield important innovations for our increasingly complex world.”
Raised in Northern Kentucky, Moser has lived around the world. He now resides in Winchester, MA, with his spouse, Harunaga Yamakawa Moser.
