Vijay Kumar

Vijay Kumar has been providing leadership for sustainable, technology-enabled educational innovation at MIT for the past 21 years. He is currently MIT’s Associate Dean of Digital Learning and the Executive Director of J-WEL (Jameel World Education Lab). He is a member of the Faculty Advisory Committee of MIT OpenCourseWare. He has served as the Executive officer for MIT's Council on Educational Technology and a member of the steering committee for I-Campus, the MIT-Microsoft Alliance initiative for educational technology.

Vijay's research, as well as his engagements as advisor/consultant, are directed toward strategy, planning, and implementing technological innovations for education. His experience also includes programs for the K-12 curriculum and teacher professional development and planning through innovative uses of technology. He currently co-leads the Tata-MIT CLIx initiative to advance educational quality and access through technology in underserved Indian schools. He is Co-PI for the Woodrow Wilson-MIT Teaching Systems Lab initiative for the professional development of teachers through contemporary learning science and technology for competency-based education. He serves as a Trustee of EDC, an international educational development organization. He serves as an Advisor for Learnlaunch Institute, an EdTech Accelerator. He is Co-PI of a US Department of Education project, “Fly-By-Wire” directed towards assisting teachers to address at scale, the learning needs of differently prepared students.

Vijay is a co-editor of a Carnegie Foundation book 'Opening Up Education' (MIT Press, August 2008). He has authored numerous articles in the area of educational innovations and technology strategy. Vijay was awarded an Honorary Professorship by Tianjin Open University, in October 2014. He was also appointed as the Exxon Mobil Chair for Technology Enabled Learning at the University of Qatar, in 2014.

Vijay received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT, Madras in 2011. Vijay is Ed.D. University of Massachusetts, Amherst; M.S. Industrial Management, and B.Tech. Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.