Dava J. Newman is the Director of the MIT Media Lab and a former Deputy Administrator of NASA. Newman earned her Ph.D. in aerospace biomedical engineering, and Master of Science degrees in aerospace engineering and technology and policy all from MIT, and her Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Notre Dame. Newman is the Apollo Program Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the faculty at the Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. She is also a MacVicar Faculty Fellow, former Director of the Technology and Policy Program at MIT, and has been the Director of the MIT Portugal Program since 2011. As the Director of MIT's Technology and Policy Program, she led the Institute's largest multidisciplinary graduate research program, with over 1,200 alumni. She has been a faculty member in her home department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and MIT's School of Engineering since 1993.