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Robert Stoner

MITEI Director

Robert Stoner is a condensed matter physicist, and serves concurrently as the Director for Science and Technology of the MIT Energy Initiative, and Founding Director of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design. His research at MIT has been at the intersection of energy technology, society and computation, with an emphasis on power system design, optimization and regulation in developing countries.

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Work biography

Robert Stoner is serial entrepreneur and the inventor and co-inventor of numerous computational and ultrafast optical measurement techniques. His inventions formed the basis of his first semiconductor capital equipment start-up, Cooper Mountain Corporation, launched in 1995. This was combined with the optical measurement firm Rudolph Research to create Rudolph Technologies, which went public in 1997. From 2002 through 2006 he was Vice President for the Metrology, Optical Systems and Semiconductor divisions of Zygo Corporation. He subsequently lived and worked in Africa and India while serving in a variety of senior roles within the Clinton Foundation, including as the CEO of the Clinton Development Initiative.

Subsequently, he formed Vinestone Corporation, which developed early cloud-based computing applications and was later acquired. From 2002 through 2006 Robert Stoner was the group vice president for the metrology, optical systems and semiconductor divisions of Zygo Corporation, leading product development and overseeing large scale government programs, including building many of the optical systems for the National Ignition Facility, the world’s largest and most complex laser at the time.

Robert Stoner is chair of the MIT Energy Council, member of the Science and Technology Committee of the Alliance for Sustainable Energy which oversees the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, as well as the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine Research (MaREI),  the Advisory Committee of the Government of India’s Sustainable Partnership for Rooftop Solar in Bharat (Suprabha), the Aspen Institute India-US Track II Dialogue on Energy and Climate, the Rockefeller Foundation funded Global Commission to End Energy Poverty and the Rio Tinto International Advisory Committee.

Since 2020 he has also served as President of the International Conservation Fund, which funds and manages conservation projects and land acquisitions throughout the tropics.

27/05/2021 - 9:00 AM