Andy Vidan

Andy Vidan is an American computer scientist working at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
Vidan's initial research focused on quantum computing and nanotechnology. His doctoral dissertation, "Charge and Spin Effects in Semiconductor Nanostructures," presented a number of breakthrough milestones, including an observation of the quantization of current in superconducting nanowires - work that was published with Michael Tinkham, renowned Harvard University physics professor and one of the pioneers of superconductivity. Other work included investigating the properties of semiconductor quantum dots that can serve as a physical implementation of the Loss-DiVincenzo quantum computer.
Vidan's interest in massively scalable data and compute systems continued beyond quantum computing, and focused on distributed systems more generally. This led to his work on an operational, real-time, massively distributed command and control system for emergency response, for which he was awarded an IEEE Technical Field Award. This system is now operational and used by entities such as the United States Department of Homeland Security and NATO. More recently, Vidan has spun off an artificial intelligence company from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has contributed to the early concepts of composable analytics and DataOps.
Biography
Education
* 2001: BS from Cornell University
* 2006: Received the degree of Ph.D. from Harvard University
Work
* 2006: Researcher at MIT Lincoln Laboratory
* 2010: Associate CTO at MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Humanitarian Technology and Big Data
Vidan has played a role in developing distributed systems and big data technologies in support of humanitarian assistance and disaster response operations. During the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, Vidan augmented the during Operation Unified Response, and built data-driven decision support capabilities to support the effort. Vidan developed situational awareness systems for first responders. Vidan was the Software Architect and Technical Lead for the Next-Generation Incident Command System, a massively scalable real-time distributed system combining sensors, communications, and visualization and collaboration technologies. MIT Lincoln Laboratory received the 2018 Excellence in Technology Transfer Award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer, after adoption of this system both nationally and internationally. Vidan was the co-editor of the annual Humanitarian Technology special issues of the Procedia Engineering journal from 2014-2016.
Awards and Honors
* 2019: IEEE Innovation in Societal Infrastructure Award

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