Dr Datta is a Research Scientist with the Engineering Systems Division and the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the School of Engineering at MIT. He is the Co-founder and Research Director of the MIT Forum for Supply Chain Innovation which is a joint endeavour at MIT between faculty at the MIT School of Engineering and the MIT Sloan School of Management.

 

The Forum is a global consortium of industry, governments and academia at MIT since 2001 and Dr Datta acts in a research and innovation strategic advisory capacity to majorindustries, governments and multinational agencies.

 

Dr Datta is a past-member of the Technology Board of the Auto ID Center at MIT and currently the Research Co-Director of MIT Data Center that addresses systems interoperability and effective use of high volume data acquired through automatic identification technologies (for example, radio frequency identification or RFID). Dr Datta is interested to explore diverse innovative concepts, tools, technologies and standards, the confluence of which may impact decision systems in fields as diverse as medicine, healthcare, global security and enterprise interoperability management. Such convergence may also shape the evolution of adaptable business operations. Prior to developing his current interest in innovative engineering and operational systems, such as supply chain management, he was involved for 5 years with global industry and later in information technology and public education in the US Federal Government and State of California.

 

Dr Datta holds a PhD in molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics from Rutgers University School of Medicine (New Jersey, USA) and spent 15 years as a biomedical research scientist in the area of transcriptional regulation in DNA tumour viruses and neuro-endocrine cancer. He has been a student and/or research scientist and/or instructor at Princeton University, Harvard University, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital (Fellow in Medicine), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Whitehead Institute at MIT and Human Genome Center at MIT), University of California School of Medicine at San Francisco and the University of California at Berkeley.