Hamsa Balakrishnan

Hamsa Balakrishnan is the Associate Dean of Engineering and the William E. Leonhard (1940) Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. She leads the Dynamics, Infrastructure Networks, and Mobility (DINaMo) Research Group. Her research focuses on control and optimization algorithms for air transportation systems, including airport congestion, air traffic routing, and environmental impact mitigation. She holds affiliations with MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), and Operations Research Center (ORC).

Education: PhD from Stanford University and B.Tech. from IIT Madras. Research interests span large-scale cyber-physical systems, with emphasis on air traffic management, resource allocation, and machine learning applications. Notable contributions include surface management strategies, stochastic flow control, and secure surveillance systems.

Key awards include the Donald P. Eckman Award (2014), AIAA Lawrence Sperry Award (2012), and NSF CAREER Award (2008). She is a Fellow of the AIAA (2025). Teaching includes courses on air transportation operations, airport systems, and doctoral research communication.

Awards and honors: Over 10 major awards, including multiple Kevin Corker Best Paper Awards (2011, 2021, 2023). Research has been supported by NSF, FAA, and NASA.