For Julie E. Greenberg SM ’89, PhD ’94, what started with a middle-of-the-night cellphone name from abroad turned a gratifying profession of research, analysis, mentoring, advocacy, and guiding of the workplace of a singular program with a mission to teach the following technology of clinician-scientists and engineers.
In 1987, Greenberg was a pc engineering graduate of the College of Michigan, dwelling in Tel Aviv, Israel, the place she was working for Motorola — when she answered an early-morning name from Roger Mark, then the director of the Harvard-MIT Program in Well being Sciences and Expertise (HST). A local of Detroit, Michigan, Greenberg had simply been accepted into MIT’s electrical engineering and pc science (EECS) graduate program.
HST — one of many world’s oldest interdisciplinary instructional packages based mostly on translational medical science and engineering — had been providing the medical engineering and medical physics (MEMP) PhD program since 1978, nevertheless it was then nonetheless comparatively unknown. Mark, an MIT distinguished professor of well being sciences and know-how and of EECS, and assistant professor of medication at Harvard Medical Faculty, was calling to ask Greenberg if she may be occupied with enrolling in HST’s MEMP program.
“On the time, I had utilized to MIT not figuring out that HST existed,” Greenberg remembers. “So, I used to be groggily answering the cellphone in the midst of the night time and making an attempt to be quiet, as a result of my roommate was a co-worker at Motorola, and nobody but knew that I used to be planning to go away to go to grad faculty. Roger requested if I’d wish to be thought-about for HST, however he additionally steered that I may come to EECS within the fall, study extra about HST, after which apply the next 12 months. That was the choice I selected.”
For Greenberg, who retired March 15 from her position as senior lecturer and director of schooling — that early morning cellphone name was the primary she would hear of this system the place she would finally spend the majority of her 37-year profession at MIT, first as a scholar, then because the director of HST’s tutorial workplace. Throughout her first 12 months as a graduate scholar, she enrolled in school HST.582/6.555 (Biomedical Sign and Picture Processing), for which she later served as lecturer and finally course director, educating the category nearly yearly for 3 a long time. However as a first-year graduate scholar, she says she discovered that “all of the cool children” have been HST college students. “It was a small class, so all of us received to know one another,” Greenberg remembers. “EECS was a giant program. The MEMP college students have been a good, close-knit neighborhood, so along with my need to work on biomedical purposes, that made HST very interesting.”
Additionally piquing her curiosity in HST was assembly Martha L. Grey, the Whitaker Professor in Biomedical Engineering. Grey, who can also be a professor of EECS and a core school member of the MIT Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), was then a brand new member of the EECS school, and Greenberg met her at an orientation occasion for graduate scholar girls, who have been a smaller cohort then, in comparison with now. Grey SM ’81, PhD ’86 turned Greenberg’s tutorial advisor when she joined HST. Greenberg’s SM and PhD analysis was on sign processing for listening to aids, in what was then the Sensory Communication Group in MIT’s Analysis Laboratory of Electronics (RLE).
Grey later succeeded Mark as director of HST at MIT, and it was she who recruited Greenberg to hitch as HST director of schooling in 2004, after Greenberg had spent a decade as a researcher in RLE.
“Julie is wonderful — considered one of my greatest choices as HST director was to rent Julie. She is an exceptionally clear thinker, an outstanding collaborator, and depraved sensible,” Grey says. “Certainly one of her superpowers is having the ability to take one thing that’s extremely complicated and to interrupt it down into logical chunks … And he or she is totally dedicated to advocating for the scholars. She isn’t any pushover, however she has a manner of arising with options to what appear to be unfixable issues, earlier than they turn into even greater.”
Greenberg’s expertise as an HST graduate scholar herself has knowledgeable her management, giving her a singular perspective on the challenges for individuals who are finding out and researching in a demanding program that flows between two highly effective establishments. HST college students have full entry to lessons and all tutorial and different alternatives at each MIT and Harvard College, whereas having a main establishment for administrative functions, and in the end to award their diploma. HST’s dwelling at Harvard is within the London Society at Harvard Medical Faculty, whereas at MIT, it’s IMES.
In trying again on her profession in HST, Greenberg says the overarching theme is considered one of “doing all the things attainable to easy the trail. In order that college students can get to the place they should go, and study what they should study, and do what they should do, slightly than getting caught up within the bureaucratic obstacles of maneuvering between establishments. Having been by means of it myself provides me sense of empower the scholars.”
Rachel Frances Bellisle, an HST MEMP scholar who’s graduating in Might and is finding out bioastronautics, says that having Julie as her tutorial advisor was invaluable due to her eagerness to unravel the thorniest of points. “Each time I used to be making an attempt to navigate one thing and was having bother discovering an answer, Julie was somebody I may all the time flip to,” she says. “I do know many graduate college students in different packages who haven’t had the essential good thing about that kind of individualized help. She’s all the time had my again.”
And Xining Gao, a fourth-year MEMP scholar finding out organic engineering, says that as a scholar who began in the course of the Covid pandemic, having somebody like Greenberg and the others within the HST tutorial workplace — who labored to beat the challenges of interacting largely over Zoom — made a vital distinction. “Plenty of us who joined in 2020 felt fairly disconnected,” Gao says. “Julie being our touchstone and information within the absence of face-to-face interactions was so key.” The pandemic challenges impressed Gao to tackle scholar authorities positions, together with as PhD co-chair of the HST Joint Council. “Working with Julie, I’ve seen firsthand how dedicated she is to our division,” Gao says. “She is really a cornerstone of the HST neighborhood.”
Throughout her time at MIT, Greenberg has been concerned in lots of Institute-level initiatives, together with as a member of the 2016 class of the Chief to Chief program. She lauded L2L as being “transformative” to her skilled improvement, saying that there have been “numerous events the place I’ve been in a position to clear up an issue shortly and effectively by reaching out to a fellow L2L alum in one other a part of the Institute.”
Since Greenberg began main HST operations, this system has steadily developed. When Greenberg was a scholar, the MEMP class was comparatively small, admitting 10 college students yearly, with roughly 30 p.c of them being girls. Now, roughly 20 new MEMP PhD college students and 30 new MD or MD-PhD college students be a part of the HST neighborhood annually, and half of them are girls. Since 2004, the typical time-to-degree for HST MEMP PhD college students dropped by nearly a full 12 months, and is now on par with the typical for all graduate packages in MIT’s Faculty of Engineering, regardless of the problems of taking lessons at each Harvard and MIT.
A search is underway for Julie’s substitute. However within the meantime, those that have labored together with her reward her affect on HST, and on MIT.
“All through your complete historical past of the HST ecosystem, you can’t discover anybody who cares extra about HST college students than Julie,” says Collin Stultz, the Nina T. and Robert H. Rubin Professor in Medical Engineering and Science, and professor of EECS. Stultz can also be the co-director of HST, in addition to a 1997 HST MD graduate. “She is, and has all the time been, a formidable advocate for HST college students and an oracle of knowledge to me.”
Elazer Edelman ’78, SM ’79, PhD ’84, the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science and director of IMES, says that Greenberg “has been a mentor to generations of scholars and leaders — she is a drive of nature whose ardour for studying and educating is matched by love for our folks and the spirit of our establishments. Her identify is synonymous with a lot of our most modern instructional initiatives; certainly, she has touched each facet of HST and IMES this very many a long time. It’s arduous to think about tutorial life right here with out her guiding hand.”
Greenberg says she is trying ahead to spending extra time on her hobbies, together with baking, gardening, and journey, and that she might examine getting concerned in a roundabout way with working with STEM and underserved communities. She describes leaving now as “bittersweet. However I believe that HST is in a robust, safe place, and I’m excited to see what’s going to occur subsequent, however from additional away … and so long as they hold inviting alumni to the HST dinners, I’ll come.”
