MIT Names David Siegel Innovation Fellow to Accelerate AI in Science

MIT has appointed David Siegel SM ’86, PhD ’91, as its next Innovation Fellow for the 2026–27 academic year. In this role, Siegel will partner with the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing to explore how artificial intelligence can accelerate scientific discovery across the Institute and beyond. MIT President Sally Kornbluth highlighted Siegel’s longstanding collaboration with Institute leadership, noting his technical acumen and strategic vision as critical assets at the intersection of AI and research. Siegel’s connection to MIT spans decades. He completed his graduate studies in electrical engineering and computer science after earning his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1983. During his time at MIT, he worked in the AI Laboratory on human-machine interaction, contributing to the development of an early robotic hand. He remains deeply embedded in the Institute’s ecosystem as a life member of the MIT Corporation and co-chair of the External Advisory Committee for the Schwarzman College of Computing. He also helped launch and currently co-chairs the MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence, an institution-wide initiative examining cognition in biological and artificial systems. Beyond academia, Siegel has built a substantial career in technology investment and philanthropy. He co-founded Two Sigma in 2001, a quantitative investment firm that applies machine learning and data science to financial markets, and retired from daily operations in 2024 while retaining his co-chair position. Through the Siegel Family Endowment, established in 2011, he funds initiatives examining societal shifts driven by technological change, supporting organizations such as Khan Academy, the Scratch Foundation, and The Aspen Institute. Most recently, he founded Open Athena in 2024, a nonprofit that provides academic labs with AI talent, computational resources, and engineering support. Open Athena is also developing Marin, a publicly shared 535-billion-parameter foundation model designed to democratize access to frontier AI research. During his fellowship, Siegel will engage with faculty and students, advise Institute leadership, and participate in public forums. His tenure will coincide with the March 2025 release of his debut book, When Machines Act: The Promise and Peril of Navigating Our Agentic AI Future, co-authored with Yale’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Stephen Henriques. The work synthesizes insights from over 300 CEOs and industry leaders into a framework for deploying and governing autonomous AI systems. Siegel also serves on multiple governance boards, including advisory roles at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science and Cornell Tech, and actively mentors founders through his family office, Shinrai Management. The MIT Innovation Fellow program historically brings high-profile industry and government leaders to campus to provide strategic counsel and foster cross-disciplinary collaboration. Previous fellows include former IBM CEO Virginia Rometty, former Google executive chair Eric Schmidt, and former White House National Economic Council director Brian Deese. Under the leadership of Schwarzman College of Computing Dean Dan Huttenlocher and Provost Anantha Chandrakasan, Siegel’s appointment signals a sustained institutional focus on aligning AI advancement with open scientific progress. Siegel stated that leveraging AI to solve complex scientific problems represents the ultimate engineering challenge, positioning MIT as the ideal environment to drive that work forward.