Alumni - MIT HASTS

Originally called History and Social Study of Science and Technology (HSSST), and renamed to History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS) in 2004, the program has granted 112 doctoral degrees since its inception in 1988. HASTS alumni bring deep intellectual curiosity to their professional lives—whether they are serving in academic positions or making their mark at a public agency or private corporation. Read more about what our alumni are doing after graduation in the News and Alumni Books sections of this website.

Julia Menzel

Dissertation: American Physics from the Cold War to Neoliberal Order, 1962-1991

Advisor: David Kaiser

Degree Awarded: 2025

Current Affiliation: University of Toronto, Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology

Boyd Ruamcharoen

Dissertation: Deteriorating Relations: Weatherable Materials, Tropical Decay, and American Power, 1942-1970s

Advisor: Christopher Capozzola

Degree Awarded: 2025

Current Affiliation: Harvard University, Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History

Caroline (White-Nockleby) Mackleby

Dissertation: Making Energy Work: Enacting Renewable Transitions in the Deserts of Chile and California

Advisor: Stefan Helmreich

Degree Awarded: 2025

Current Affiliation: Utah Inland Port Authority

Alexander Rewegan

Dissertation: Crafting Cannabinoid Capitalism: Health, Sustainability, and Regeneration in the United States

Advisor: Heather Paxson

Degree Awarded: 2025

Current Affiliation: Tufts University

Nadia Christidi

Dissertation: Envisioning Water: Sustainability and Future-Making in Dubai and Los Angeles

Advisor: Christine Walley

Degree Awarded: 2024

Current Affiliation: Columbia University, Center for the Study of Social Difference

Di Wu

Dissertation: Autonomy Work: Personhood, Expertise, and Activism of Disabled AI Data Works in China

Advisor: Stefan Helmreich

Degree Awarded: 2024

Current Affiliation: Yale-China Association

Timothy Loh

Dissertation: Entanglements of Language, Religion, and Disability: The Politics of Assistive Technologies for Deaf People in Jordan

Advisor: Stefan Helmreich

Degree Awarded: 2024

Current Affiliation: Princeton University, Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts

Alex Reiss-Sorokin

Dissertation: From Research to Search: Technologies and Techniques of Legal Research, 1880-1980

Advisor: Susan Silbey

Degree Awarded: 2024

Current Affiliation: Princeton University, Institute for Advanced Study

Aja Grande

Dissertation: He Lāhui Hawaiʻi Ma O Ka Hoʻomomona Hou I Ka ʻĀina: Nā Moʻolelo Lōkahi Ma Ka Mokupuni ʻO Oʻahu (A Hawaiian Nation Through The Restoration Of ʻĀina Momona: Stories Of Unity– Among Ourselves, That Which Feeds, Community, And Spirit–On The Island Of Oʻahu)

Advisor: Christine Walley

Degree Awarded: 2024

Current Affiliation: University of Hawaiʻi Foundation / Institute for Transformative Technologies (ITT)

Steven Gonzalez

Dissertation: Cloud Ecologies: An Ethnography of Data Centers

Advisor: Stefan Helmreich

Degree Awarded: 2023

Current Affiliation: Goethe University

Gabrielle Robbins

Dissertation: Antimalarial Afterlives: Medicine for a Planetary Age from Madagascar

Advisor: Christine Walley

Degree Awarded: 2023

Current Affiliation: University of Oxford

Michelle Spektor

Dissertation: From Documents to Data: The Emergence of National Biometric Identification Systems in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Advisor: Jennifer Light

Degree Awarded: 2023

Current Affiliation: MIT

Elena Sobrino

Dissertation: Living with Crisis: Family, Labor, and Science in the Flint Water Crisis

Advisor: Christine Walley

Degree Awarded: 2023

Current Affiliation: Tufts University

John Tylko

Dissertation: Simulating Apollo: Flight Simulation Technology 1945-1975

Advisor: David Mindell

Degree Awarded: 2023

Current Affiliation:

Jamie Wong

Dissertation: The Politics of Scale and Scaling in Chinese Governance and Venture Capitalism

Advisor: Graham Jones

Degree Awarded: 2023

Current Affiliation: Princeton University

Marc Aidinoff

Dissertation: A More Updated Union: A History of New Liberals and Their New Computers in the New New South

Advisor: David Kaiser

Degree Awarded: 2022

Current Affiliation: Harvard University

Richard Fadok

Dissertation: In Life's Likeness: Biomimicry and the Imitation of Nature

Advisor: Stefan Helmreich

Degree Awarded: 2022

Current Affiliation: Rochester Institute of Technology

Lauren Kapsalakis

Dissertation: The Loss of Integration Vs. Unity in Diversity: American Anthropology in the 1970s and 1980s and the Founding of the Society for Cultural Anthropology

Advisor: Harriet Ritvo

Degree Awarded: 2022

Current Affiliation:

Rijul Kochhar

Dissertation: Antibiotic Resistance, Planetary Crisis, and Bacteriophage Futures in the 21st Century

Advisor: Michael M.J. Fischer

Degree Awarded: 2022

Current Affiliation: Harvard University

Crystal Lee

Dissertation: Sensory Encounters in the Age of Computation

Advisor: Graham Jones

Degree Awarded: 2022

Current Affiliation: MIT

Luísa Reis Castro

Dissertation: Vectors of Health: Epidemics, Ecologies, and the Reinvention of Mosquito Science in Brazil

Advisor: Stefan Helmreich

Degree Awarded: 2021

Current Affiliation: University of Southern California

Pages: 1234567

*Alumni with an asterisk (*) next to their name received a degree from another MIT PhD program, but were advised or co-advised by STS faculty members before the HSSST graduate program was created.

PEOPLE | Alumni