WILLIAM B. BONVILLIAN
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, WASHINGTON OFFICE
DIRECTOR

Since January 2006, he has been Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Washington Office, reporting to MIT’s President. At MIT, he works to support MIT’s strong and historic relations with federal R&D agencies, and its role on national science policy.  He has assisted with major MIT technology policy initiatives, on energy technology, the “convergence” of life, engineering and physical sciences, advanced manufacturing and online higher education. Prior to MIT, he worked for over fifteen years as a senior policy advisor in the U.S. Senate on legislative efforts on science, technology and innovation issues.

He teaches at Georgetown Johns Hopkins SAIS, and MIT and has lectured and given speeches before numerous organizations on innovation questions, including invited lectures at six universities. He served for seven years on the Board on Science Education of the National Academies of Sciences, and has served on four Academies’ Committees. He is on the AAAS Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy and on the Board of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). He was the recipient of the IEEE Distinguished Public Service Award in 2007 and was elected a Fellow by the AAAS in 2011.

His book, with Distinguished Prof. Charles Weiss of Georgetown, entitled Structuring an Energy Technology Revolution, was published by MIT Press in 2009 and has written extensively on science and technology policy for academic journals.  Prior to his work in the Senate, he was a partner at a large national law firm and served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Transportation, working on major transportation deregulation legislation. He received a B.A. from Columbia with honors, an M.A.R. from Yale in religion, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School where he was on law review; and clerked for a noted federal judge.