Daniel E. Hastings is the Interim Vice Chancellor and the Cecil and Ida Green Education Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was appointed in 2024 following the departure of Ian A. Waitz, who is now MIT’s Vice President for Research.
Hastings first joined the faculty at MIT in 1985. In 2021, Hastings was appointed co-chair of MIT’s Values Statement Committee, a charge by MIT leadership to engage the community in the foundational work of developing a statement of shared institutional values, the results of which were accepted by MIT’s academic council in 2022. Hastings was the faculty lead of the MIT School of Engineering Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, and in 2021 he was appointed associate dean focusing on advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across the School. He was appointed as interim vice chancellor in ma 2
His research specializations include synergetic interactions between space systems and the space environment, space propulsion, space policy, space systems, spacecraft manufacturing processes, space system architecting.
An Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), in 2002, Hastings was awarded the Losey Atmospheric Sciences Award from the AIAA. He is a fellow (academician) of the International Astronautical Federation and the International Council in System Engineering. He was also the recipient of MIT’s Gordon Billard Award for “special service of outstanding merit performed for the Institute” in 2013.