Frank Moss

Frank Moss is Director of the MIT Media Lab and holds the Jerome Wiesner professorship of Media Arts and Sciences. An entrepreneur and 30-year veteran of the software and computer industries, Frank Moss has spent his career bringing innovative business technologies to market. In recent years, however, he's been seeking something different: how to make a broader contribution to the world by using technology to address pressing social issues—such as health care—and to improve quality of life for people worldwide.

As part of this quest in 2000 he chaired an external advisory council to the Harvard Medical School which proposed the creation of the Systems Biology Department, the first new department to be created there in many decades. In 2001 he co-founded and is on the board of Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an early-stage cancer-drug discovery company doing innovative work at the intersection of technology and the life sciences. Today, Infinity is public and has several targeted cancer drugs in human clinical trail.

Moss assumed his current position at the Media Lab in early 2006. The Lab has played a pioneering role over the last 20 years in creating the digital lifestyle we enjoy today. But Moss believes the best is yet to come: a globally connected digital society that makes people smarter, healthier, and more creative. Under Moss’s leadership the Lab is conducting research on technology that extend and enhance people's physical, cognitive, and social capabilities; computers that can relate to people in more human terms; and organically decentralized networks that unlock the creative, innovation, and problem-solving powers of people—particularly young people who have grown up "being digital"—in ways not before possible.


During his career in the computer and software industries, Moss served as CEO and chairman of Tivoli Systems Inc., a pioneer in the distributed systems management field, which he took public in 1995 and subsequently merged with IBM in 1996. He co-founded several other companies, including Stellar Computer, Inc., a developer of graphic supercomputers; and Bowstreet, Inc., a pioneer in the emerging field of Web services, which was also acquired by IBM.

He began his career at IBM's scientific center in Haifa, Israel, where he also taught at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. He later held various research and management positions at IBM's Yorktown Heights (NY) Research Center, working on advanced development projects in the areas of networking and distributed computing; and executive management positions at Apollo Computer, Inc., and Lotus Development Corporation.

Moss currently serves as a member of the board of trustees of Princeton University and is a member of the Leadership Council for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Princeton. He is also a member of the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation Advisory Council. He served as a member of the board of trustees of the Tenacre Country Day School in Wellesley Massachusetts from 1999 – 2007.

Moss received a BS in aerospace and mechanical sciences from Princeton University in 1971, and both his MS and PhD in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT. His citations include Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year award and Forbes Magazine's "Leaders for Tomorrow."