Have you met... Christina Chase?


Christina believes that interdisciplinary teams bring creative solutions!

Christina Chase is a lecturer at MIT in the Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and in the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.  She also founded the MIT sports lab, which she’s been running for the last couple years. Cristina is the advisor of multiple sport tech startups!

 
Christina Chase at MIT.
With such an experience in the field, you must have been the mentor of many young scientists. Which are the qualities that you appreciate that they should have?
Ah! I am very lucky to work with amazing young scientists and engineers and I think one of the most incredible qualities that this MIT Portugal population has is their hunger to learn, their ability to be fearless and asking hard questions. Basically, they are fearless to challenge their knowledge base and really try to find ways to expand and do great things for the world.

You probably collaborate a lot with other people, which are the qualities you seek in collaborators?
The humbleness around their expertise, that’s one of the most incredible traits that scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs should have and be also open to listening to the opinions of others. So, it is very important to listen independently of the field because every discipline also has a different way of processing and tackling the problem. When you bring these interdisciplinary teams we end up with very creative solutions.

If you weren’t doing what you do nowadays, what would you be doing instead as a job?
I would be a race car driver [laughs]! I would love that! Because of the speed, the competition, the thrill and so on! [very funny and surprising moment]

In your opinion, what will be the major breakthrough in science or tech in the next 20 years?
The exciting part is how fast things are developing right now and I think we can’t even predict where we would be in the next 20 minutes. I see the future every day and I don’t know if I could even have predicted some of the developments that I’ve seen in the last five years, for example, autonomous vehicles have come fastest that I thought but virtual reality hasn’t done it as fastest as everyone expected. I think we’re going to see quite a bit of acceleration in new tools, techniques, and models just by the speed of which technological innovations take place these days.

When you have a bad day, what is your getaway?
[laughing] sports! If I can I get out and try to be in contact with nature, in the ocean or on the water. Pretty much that, without a doubt!

We hope you enjoy this have you met signature! We both met Christina, one-year apart when we were at MIT taking the workshop on Innovating. She is an inspiration, it was amazing to meet her!

Stay tuned for more interviews! Is there anything you want to know more about Christina? As always, feel free to comment on anything.



0 comments