Sanjay Sarma is CEO, President and Dean of the Asia School of Business, and a professor of engineering and the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Sarma was one of the founders of the Auto-ID Center at MIT, which, along with a number of partner companies and its "spin-off", EPCglobal, developed the technical concepts and standards of modern RFID. He also chaired the Auto-ID Research Council consisting of 6 labs worldwide, which he helped set up. Today, the suite of standards developed by the Auto-ID Center, commonly referred to as the EPC, are being used by over a thousand companies on five continents.
Sarma serves as chairman of EPCglobal, the worldwide standards body he helped create. Between 2004 and 2006, Sarma took a leave of absence from MIT to found the software company OATSystems, which was acquired by Checkpoint Systems (NYSE:CKP) in 2008. He is a consultant and board-member at several companies, and also serves as a permanent guest of the board of GS1 and a member of the board of governors of GS1US. He also served on the board of Hochschild Mining (LON: HOC), and was involved in the IPO of the spinout, Aclara Resources (TSE:ARA). He serves on the board of the AI company Rekor Systems (NASDAQ: REKR). He has also serves on the boards, founded or advises several companies including Cleanlab (an AI startup), Alsym (a battery startup), IFM Investors and Jimco.Sarma is an expert on digital transformation, and has researched, led, written about and spoken on projects related to RFID, IoT, sensors, autonomy, AI, AR, VR, 5G and the philosophy and ethics of technology and innovation. He is widely considered one of the progenitors of modern RFID systems and the field of IoT. He has also done significant work on the future of work and national and intergovernmental policies.
Sarma received his Bachelors from the Indian Institute of Technology, his Masters from Carnegie Mellon University and his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. In between degrees, Sarma worked at Schlumberger Oilfield Services in Aberdeen, UK. Sarma's Masters thesis was in the area of operations research, and his PhD was in the area of automation. His current research projects are in the areas of RFID, sensors, IoT, AI and energy, especially applied to batteries, transportation and sustainability. He has over 150 publications in computational geometry, manufacturing, CAD, RFID, signal processing, security, sensors and automotive systems. He is one of the key author's of India's Aadhaar unique ID system which underlies its digital ecosystem.Sarma's research has been recognized with several best paper awards.
He is a recipient of the MIT MacVicar Fellowship, National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Daniel and Fort Flowers Chair at MIT, the Den Hartog Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Keenan Award for innovations in undergraduate education, the New England Business and Technology Award, and the MIT Global Indus Award. He was selected on 2003's Business Week ebiz 25, Fast Company Magazine's Fast Fifty and the RFID Journal's Special Achievement Award. Between 2010 and 2012, Sarma helped establish a new university in Singapore called the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). Since 2012, he served as the first Director of Digital Learning at MIT and the VP of Open Learning there. His Office, the Open Learning, oversaw MIT’s Open CourseWare project and the development of MIT’s pioneering Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC’s), MicroMasters, the MIT Integrated Learning Initiative, the Jameel World Education Lab, MIT xPro and Horizon. Sarma also served on the board of edX, the global online education provider.
