M. A n j a l iXS a s t r y

Senior Lecturer, Sloan School of Management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

to reach me
+1.617.253.0965 voice
+1.617.258.7579 fax
sastry at mit dot edu
office hours page to sign up for a time to talk
E62-433, 100 Main Street, Cambridge MA 02142

I’m interested in the practical, operational, managerial, and systems aspects of getting healthcare to the people who most need it. Check out my posts (and some from students) on my global health delivery blog.

From 2008, I taught G-Lab: Global Health Delivery, and now a new pair of classes on Global Health Delivery and Management.  The spring Lab course pairs classroom learning and interaction with projects partnering student teams with organizations in sub-Saharan Africa on the front lines of delivering healthcare. After working for a half-semester at MIT, students spend two intensive weeks in March on site developing and delivering a practical solution for their partner organizations. Our class blog includes updates on projects as well as course-related material. A huge thank you to the Global Health Delivery Project for partnering with and educating us. We are forever grateful to MIT Sloan’s amazing supporters for making it possible.

Visit the globalhealth.mit.edu site for information on globalhealth @MIT brown bag talks, events, an innovative student fellowship LiGHTs, and more.

I teach in the System Dynamics area and post occasionally on system dynamics and more generally on thinking systemically. Wondering how to define system dynamics?

System dynamics is a methodology for studying and managing complex feedback systems, such as one finds in business and other social systems. In fact it has been used to address practically every sort of feedback system. While the word system has been applied to all sorts of situations, feedback is the differentiating descriptor here. Feedback refers to the situation of X affecting Y and Y in turn affecting X perhaps through a chain of causes and effects. One cannot study the link between X and Y and, independently, the link between Y and X and predict how the system will behave. Only the study of the whole system as a feedback system will lead to correct results.

source

I’m teaching the Global Challenges version of the advanced Applications of System Dynamics class this year. It includes ten different and fascinating system dynamics projects.

To put MIT to work for Haiti’s post-earthquake relief and reconstruction, I helped develop a new collaborative effort. See our evolving Haiti blog with posts from the team, which includes students from across MIT and elsewhere and colleagues at the Center for Logistics and Transportation.

I have also spent much of the past decade learning about and running many educational experiments to help our students get even better at managing and leading effectively. See praxis, my old blog on this topic. And stay tuned for new material to come.

For more on my background, training, and experience, see my bio.

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