Vice Provost for Translation and Entrepreneurship (VPTE) Job Description

MIT is seeking its inaugural Vice Provost for Translation and Entrepreneurship (VPTE). Alongside education and research, translation and entrepreneurship are central to how MIT delivers on its mission to bring knowledge to bear on the world’s great challenges. The importance of that work calls on the Institute to organize, broaden and accelerate it. MIT begins from a position of strength: Alumni have founded more than 30,000 active companies, generating roughly $1.9 trillion in annual revenue, with long-term success and stability metrics that far surpass national averages. In FY2025 alone MIT reported 684 invention disclosures, 137 licenses, and 38 startup formations.

Reporting directly to the provost, the VPTE is a senior academic leader who will champion, support, and coordinate MIT’s ecosystem for translation and entrepreneurship. This role coordinates and supports rather than controls. Its purpose is to make the system work as a whole – surfacing gaps, establishing service standards, and connecting pathways that today operate largely independently. The aim of this new position is to identify opportunities and remove barriers for MIT’s remarkable community of inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs, accelerating the movement of ideas from the lab and the dorm into the world. The VPTE will assess the programs within MIT’s translation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, reform the institutional policies and practices that affect the speed of translation, strengthen pathways for students and faculty alike, steward alumni engagement, represent MIT externally, build philanthropic support, and ensure accountability for improving outcomes.

This is a position for a dynamic leader who wants to change how a great research university does this work – someone deeply committed to ensuring that ideas born at the Institute can have large-scale, real-world impact.

The position follows the August 2026 report of the Committee on Accelerating Translation and Entrepreneurship, charged by President Sally Kornbluth and Provost Anantha Chandrakasan. Candidates are encouraged to read the report, which sets out the findings and recommendations this role is charged with carrying forward.

Key areas of responsibility

Convene and coordinate

The VPTE will develop a broad and deep understanding of MIT’s translation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, meeting regularly with both internal and external stakeholders to understand their priorities, opportunities, concerns, and challenges. Working closely with the Deans of the five schools and the College, as well as MIT’s senior officers, the VPTE will help develop and implement policies and procedures affecting MIT’s translation and entrepreneurship enterprise. The VPTE will convene both internal and external advisory boards to provide input into MIT’s strategy and activities for accelerating translation and entrepreneurship. Key partners include the Technology Licensing Office, the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Office of the General Counsel, the Alumni Association, and the many centers, programs, and student communities that make up MIT’s robust entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Reduce institutional friction

Working with key partners and stakeholders, the VPTE will lead reform of the policies and practices governing faculty leaves, conflict-of-interest management, licensing timelines and terms, access to laboratory facilities, and sponsored research — replacing negotiation-by-exception with transparent, predictable pathways. The VPTE will also help ensure that, as MIT engages the outside ecosystem more openly, faculty and student interests are protected and the integrity of MIT’s research and teaching is preserved.

Strengthen pathways for students, faculty, and researchers

MIT’s entrepreneurial community ranges from the merely curious to the deeply committed, and spans undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, research scientists, and faculty. The VPTE will work with the schools, the College, and MIT’s centers and programs so that members of this community can find support matched to their stage and ambition — from first exposure in the classroom to venture-building out of the lab — with particular attention to students for whom entrepreneurship is not already a familiar path.

Engage externally

The VPTE will forge relationships with investors, industry leaders, government agencies, health systems, alumni founders, and international partners, opening new opportunities for MIT in the innovation ecosystem locally, regionally, and globally. The VPTE will serve as a champion and spokesperson for MIT’s community of inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs, representing MIT externally through events, media interviews, and other forms of public outreach. In partnership with the Alumni Association, the VPTE will also steward MIT’s engagement with alumni entrepreneurs and venture investors.

Raise funds and manage resource allocation

The VPTE will connect philanthropic strategy and activities across the Institute with a focus on translation and entrepreneurship, serving as a subject matter advisor for MIT Resource Development and working to ensure that capacity-building efforts for translation and entrepreneurship are well-coordinated. As part of the annual academic budget process led by the provost, the VPTE will provide input on budget requests and make recommendations on allocations as related to translation and entrepreneurship.

Drive accountability

To ensure the effectiveness and ongoing improvement of MIT’s systems and processes for supporting translation and entrepreneurship, the VPTE will develop a translation and entrepreneurship dashboard. The dashboard will track metrics covering process timelines and outcomes, education, equity, faculty engagement, alumni activation, and venture outcomes. The dashboard will only be as good as the data that informs it; the VPTE will be responsible for identifying the needed data and collecting it, analyzing, and synthesizing it. Through the dashboard, the VPTE will identify gaps and determine the necessary steps for closing those gaps.

Qualifications

The successful candidate will bring:

• Deep, first-hand knowledge of translation and entrepreneurship – gained through founding or building ventures, investing, leading translational programs, or conducting research whose results have reached the world;
• The academic standing and judgment to work as a peer with MIT’s deans, faculty, and senior officers, and the credibility to be trusted by faculty at all stages in venture-building;
• A record of leading change across organizational boundaries without direct authority, and exceptional convening and influencing skills;
• The ability to inspire action, build consensus, and represent MIT persuasively to external audiences;
• Strong organizational and analytical capabilities, and a passion for guiding others through their own journeys of discovery and entrepreneurship.

How to express interest

Interested candidates may nominate themselves by sending a CV and a brief statement of interest to vptesearch@mit.edu. Nominations of others are also welcome as are confidential inquiries. Please submit materials by September 30, 2026. To ensure a broad and thoughtful review, a faculty search advisory group is assisting the provost to evaluate candidates.