Anant Agarwal

Professor Anant Agarwal is chief executive of the online learning destination edX. He taught the first edX course on circuits and electronics, which drew 155,000 students from 162 countries. He previously served as director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where he is also professor of electrical engineering and computer science. Professor Agarwal is a successful serial entrepreneur, having co-founded several companies, including Tilera Corporation and Virtual Machine Works. He is a recipient of the Maurice Wilkes award for computer architecture, and MIT’s Smullin and Jamieson prizes for teaching. He was also awarded the Harold W. McGraw, Jr Prize for Higher Education for his work in advancing the massive open online courses movement.