Amy Smith is a senior lecturer in mechanical engineering at MIT and the founding director of MIT D-Lab. She founded D-Lab in 2002 as a series of courses and field trips that focus on the development, design and dissemination of appropriate technologies for international development. She currently co-leads the Humanitarian Innovation Initiative at D-Lab, and focuses on advancing participation and participatory design in the humanitarian context. At present, she is working on projects in Uganda, South Sudan and Mali.

Amy served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Botswana and has worked in more than 20 countries. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2004 recognizing her work in this area, and was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2010 for her work promoting local innovation.