Dr. Christine Ortiz is the (tenured and chaired) Morris Cohen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ortiz is a distinguished scientist and engineer with over 175 scholarly publications, has supervised the research projects of more than 100 students from 10 different academic disciplines, and received 30 national and international honors, including the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering which was awarded to her at the White House by President George W. Bush. Ortiz served as the Dean for Graduate Education at MIT between 2010 and 2016, supporting approximately 7,000 graduate students from 100+ countries. With over 25 years of experience in higher education, Dr. Ortiz has led cross-institutional initiatives in diversity, equity, and inclusion, global education, technology-enabled learning, new methods of learning assessment, and postsecondary financial models. Ortiz has served on or chaired over 50 task forces, working groups, and committees in higher education. Ortiz served as a regional accreditation commissioner for the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

Ortiz is the founder of a new nonprofit higher education institution, Station1, which is focused on expanding opportunity and socially-directed science and technology education, research, and innovation. Ortiz has been active in shaping the national and international dialogue on higher education and has spoken at or will speak at the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, The United Nations, the League of European Research Universities (a network of 23 leading European research universities), Semesp (a national organization for Brazilian Higher Education), and the American Association for Colleges and Universities, among many other venues.