Matthew S. Kressy has been named director of the Integrated Design and Management (IDM) master's degree track offered by the MIT System Design and Management (SDM) program.
Scheduled to admit its first cohort in September 2015, IDM is the first MIT graduate program to offer a master's degree combining industrial design, engineering design, and other design disciplines with management. Like SDM, IDM is offered jointly by MIT's School of Engineering and Sloan School of Management, and is targeted at early- to mid-career professionals. Graduates will receive an MIT master's degree in engineering and management.
Kressy brings to MIT extensive expertise in globally distributed, interdisciplinary, design-driven product development, from deep user research and concept-generation to prototype-iteration, risk-reduction, and volume manufacturing. An entrepreneur and founder of Designturn, he has designed, invented, engineered, and manufactured more than 100 products for Fortune 500 clients and others, including Kronos, Massachusetts General Hospital, APC, the U.S. Army, and Teradyne Corporation.
Kressy has co-taught SDM's product design and development courses (15.783 and ESD.40) since 1999. He has also taught or co-taught at Harvard Business School, Babson College, Olin School of Engineering, and the Rhode Island School of Design (from which he holds a bachelor of fine arts in industrial design). Companies that have helped to fund projects in his classes include Intel, Nokia, Marriott, and General Mills. In his role as IDM director, Kressy will lead the new track's development, and teach its primary and required courses.
Professor Steven Eppinger, MIT Sloan SDM co-director, says, "Matt is a brilliant industrial designer. Not only is he a hands-on expert in interdisciplinary product development, he has consistently received teaching accolades from students at MIT and the Rhode Island School of Design over the past 15-plus years."
Professor Warren Seering, MIT School of Engineering SDM co-director, adds, "In order to succeed, companies need design professionals with expertise in engineering and management, like those that MIT IDM will produce. Matt brings the perfect combination of industry experience, design expertise, and teaching excellence to IDM."
