2024 Investiture to Feature Purdue President and OpenAI CTO

Chiang, Purdue's Roscoe H. George Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has also been named this year's recipient of the Robert Fletcher Award, Dartmouth Engineering's highest honor. Named for Thayer's founding director and first professor of engineering, the award is given annually in recognition of distinguished scientific achievement and service in the highest tradition of the School.

Mung Chiang, president and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue, will deliver Thayer's keynote address.

About Mung Chiang

Before taking office as Purdue's president in January 2023, engineer, educator, technology entrepreneur, and innovator Chiang served as Purdue's executive vice president for strategic initiatives and as the John A. Edwardson Dean of the College of Engineering. Under his tenure as dean, the engineering school earned its first back-to-back top four graduate rankings in the US and grew to be the largest top ten undergraduate engineering college in the country.

Chiang began his academic career at Princeton University, where he was named the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering and was the first chairman of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council and director of the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education. His work to launch entrepreneurial programs at Princeton led him to be named a 2014 New Jersey CEO of the Year, and his research earned him the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation—the highest honor presented to an American researcher under the age of 40.

From 2019 to 2020, he served as science and technology adviser to the US secretary of state and initiated the US government's tech diplomacy programs. Since returning from Washington, in 2020, he co-founded the Krach Institute of Tech Diplomacy at Purdue and serves as the technology and innovation adviser to the state of Indiana.

Chiang holds 25 US patents, most of which have been licensed and deployed by the communications and networking industry.

Mira Murati Th'12, CTO of OpenAI, will participate in a special Q&A event following Investiture.

About Mira Murati Th'12

As chief technology officer of OpenAI, where she has spearheaded pioneering projects—including ChatGPT, Dall-E, and Codex—Murati works at the forefront of shaping the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence and machine learning and their responsible and ethical application. In her role, she oversees research, product development, and deployment.

Murati previously led OpenAI's hardware strategy, managed the reinforcement learning and safety research teams, and led product and deployment. Before joining OpenAI, she managed the product and engineering teams at Leap Motion and worked at Tesla Motors, where she led the design, development, and launch of vehicle products, including the Model X, and innovative programs in aerospace.

Today, Murati and her teams in research and product development and deployment are pushing the frontiers of what neural networks can do and are working to make AI systems safer and more aligned with human intentions and values. Her contributions to mechanical engineering, technology research, and executive leadership have made her a respected figure in her field and a mentor for tech enthusiasts worldwide.

Born in Albania, Murati attended Colby College as a Davis UWC Scholar and simultaneously earned her BA from Colby and BE from Thayer as a Dual-Degree Program student.