Update: Frank Moss named MIT Media Lab director

Technology veteran Frank Moss was named director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, a pioneering research facility in the digital technologies field, MIT officials said Wednesday.

Moss, who has nearly three decades of experience in the technology industry as both a scientist and businessman, is replacing Walter Bender. Bender is taking a leave of absence from MIT to serve as president of software and content development for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) nonprofit group, which was launched one year ago with the goal of developing low-cost laptops to help educate children around the world, particularly in developing countries. OLPC’s founder Nicholas Negroponte is also stepping down from his role as chairman of MIT’s Media Lab, which he co-founded in 1985, to devote his time to OLPC. Negroponte will continue to advise Moss on sponsorship strategies for the Media Lab.

Moss said he joined the Media Lab to help develop ways technology can benefit social problems, particularly in the areas of aging, health care and education.

Toward that end, said Moss, the Media Lab is currently working on projects to give computers human qualities, such as common sense and emotional intelligence, which he says can potentially help address some of these social issues.

As a simple example of how these initiatives could be applied to a social problem, Moss pointed to a current project under way in which the Media Lab is creating a robot that looks and feels like a teddy bear and can interact with a person in an emotional fashion.

“You can imagine giving this to a child with a chronic disease who is in a hospital for a long period of time who cannot have a pet,” said Moss.

Another potential example, said Moss, could involve outfitting an aging person’s home with technology for monitoring health status, communicating, and providing services.

Moss is planning to tap his extensive IT business background to drive corporate sponsorship for the lab’s technology research, he said.

Although Moss has worn a number of different hats in the technology world and founded several technology startups over the years, he is most widely known for his roles as chief executive officer, president and chairman of Tivoli Systems Inc., a systems and network management firm that during Moss’ tenure went public in 1995 and was acquired by IBM Corp. in 1996. After leaving Tivoli and IBM in 1998, Moss went on to found Strategic Software Ventures, a venture capital firm aimed at helping build software companies.

In a way, Moss is returning to his roots at MIT, where as a young man he earned master’s and Ph.D. degrees in aeronautics and astronautics, after receiving his bachelor of science degree in aerospace and mechanical sciences from Princeton University.