Director, Harvard-MIT HST Program
Martha L. Gray, PhD, is director of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical and Electrical Engineering.
She has a BS from Michigan State University in Computer Science, an MS in Electrical Engineering from MIT and a PhD in Medical Engineering from HST. After a post-doc at Tufts and SUNY Stony Brook, she joined the MIT faculty in HST and MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1987.
HST, a 34-year collaboration of Harvard and MIT, is an academic unit that has pioneered interdisciplinary educational and research programs focusing on solving problems in human health by bringing together the disciplines of engineering, science, technology and medicine.
As HST director, Prof. Gray has deep expertise in developing enduring connection between the science, medicine and business cultures that ultimately must work together to effectively translate from “bench to bedside.” Under Prof. Gray’s leadership, HST has recently established several major new research and educational programs. She initiated, with colleagues at MIT’s Sloan school, a Biomedical Enterprise program, intended to train the future leaders who, from a commercial standpoint, will translate science and technology to clinical use. In partnership with local teaching hospitals (MGH, CHB, BWH) she championed the creation of the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, and programs in Biomedical Informatics and Bio-micro-electrical systems (BioMEMs) each involving faculty and training students from Harvard and MIT. She and her colleagues have also established a popular program that provides students with exposure to and mentors from the broad cross section of bio-medical professions.
Prof. Gray's research centers on ways to diagnose and treat cartilage degeneration (arthritis). Most recently, she and her group created a nondestructive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) method for assessing cartilage now being used by many in industry and academia, to provide a window into how disease and therapeutic strategies affect cartilage tissue per se. It offers an alternative to radiography particularly valuable for early diagnosis and therapy. Her other research interests include connective tissue physiology, imaging, and microfabrication.
She lives in Arlington MA with her husband and three children.
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