Leadership

Canan Dağdeviren, an associate professor at the MIT Media Lab and founding director of its Conformable Decoders research group, has been welcomed into the International Women’s Forum of Massachusetts following peer nomination. The Media Lab announced the affiliation in an October 13, 2026, post by David Sadat, identifying her as both a research-group leader and faculty lead of the lab’s Women’s Health Program, WHx. The announcement places Dağdeviren within a women’s leadership network whose purpose extends beyond any single profession, bringing together accomplished members to exchange experience and build relationships across disciplines and sectors.

The development is a professional-network affiliation rather than a new MIT appointment. The Media Lab’s announcement describes the Massachusetts forum’s member conversations and gatherings, along with mentoring and leadership-development opportunities available through the broader International Women’s Forum. It does not announce a research grant, a commercial agreement, or a partnership between MIT and the organization. October 13 is the publication date of the welcome; the post does not provide a separate membership-approval date, identify Dağdeviren’s nominator, or announce a particular speaking or mentoring assignment. Its focus is her entry into the leadership community.

A Nomination-Based Path to Membership

The forum’s published membership procedure explains the peer-nomination process referenced by MIT. Membership in IWF/MA is offered through nomination and invitation, rather than open enrollment. A prospective member must be nominated by at least one existing member who can speak to her qualifications and leadership. The Membership Committee then reviews the nomination before presenting it to the Board of Directors for approval; the board meets quarterly. Approved candidates receive an invitation to join both the Massachusetts forum and the global IWF network. These are the organization’s general procedures, not a disclosed account of the individual deliberations concerning Dağdeviren.

Separate nomination guidelines show that the process considers more than a candidate’s professional title. Members submitting recommendations are asked to explain the nominee’s achievements, leadership responsibilities, influence, and impact on the community, including activities beyond her own organization. They are also invited to address what the candidate could gain from membership and what other members might gain from her participation. The guidelines describe committee review as confidential and make clear that submitting a nomination does not guarantee acceptance. After board approval, the nominating member is expected to help introduce the new member to the community, with staff supporting onboarding and account setup.

The selection criteria organize those expectations around achievement, leadership, recognition, and commitment to community and other women. They include professional distinction, responsibility for consequential decisions, influence within or beyond an industry, and a record of contributing outside an organizational role. Public speaking, writing, community leadership, and willingness to share expertise with fellow members also appear among the considerations. The forum says it values diversity in age, profession, interests, and ethnic and cultural background, while allowing flexibility when evaluating exceptional candidates. Those published standards provide context for the invitation without establishing which particular achievements the committee emphasized in Dağdeviren’s case.

A Massachusetts Network Across Sectors

In its 2026 sponsorship prospectus, IWF/MA describes a community of more than 200 women leaders drawn from business, government, nonprofit organizations, healthcare, the arts, community organizations, and higher education. Members include founders, funders, chief executives, presidents, and directors. The organization presents the exchange of experience across those fields as central to its purpose: established leaders sharing insights and strengthening leadership beyond their own institutions. For Dağdeviren, the setting is therefore different from a scientific society organized around materials science or biomedical engineering. The forum’s published profile encompasses professional experience well outside the laboratory and university environment.

The prospectus’s membership breakdown makes that breadth more concrete. Academia accounts for 26 percent, healthcare for 17 percent, and STEM for 13 percent. Professional services represents 12 percent and finance 8 percent, followed by entrepreneurship at 7 percent, government and philanthropy at 5 percent each, entertainment and hospitality at 4 percent, and arts and humanities at 3 percent. Those figures describe the organization’s published community profile, rather than Dağdeviren’s prospective contacts or collaborators. They nevertheless show that academic researchers participate alongside leaders whose work involves institutions, services, public affairs, and cultural life, not solely scientific research or technology development.

The Massachusetts organization also has a history rooted in efforts to expand women’s access to executive leadership. Its account traces its beginnings to 1986, when Evelyn Murphy was elected lieutenant governor, becoming the first woman elected to statewide office in Massachusetts. A small group connected with Murphy’s campaign stayed together to support women’s advancement in the public and private sectors, initially calling itself the Women’s Economic Forum. Sheryl Marshall helped connect that group with the International Women’s Forum in late 1987. It formally became the Massachusetts Women’s Forum in 1990, with Marilyn Swartz-Lloyd as its first president and Carol Goldberg as treasurer.

Today, the organization describes its purpose as combining close relationships among Massachusetts peers with access to an international community. Its mission emphasizes advancing women’s leadership and equal opportunity, and it characterizes its collective space as inclusive and apolitical despite members’ differing individual views. The membership page says joining IWF/MA also provides access to the wider IWF network, connecting the local community with leaders across careers and cultures. That structure gives the affiliation both a regional and an international dimension: participation in a Massachusetts forum is linked to membership in the broader organization, rather than operating as an isolated local association.

The Research Background Dağdeviren Brings

Dağdeviren’s MIT biography traces a career spanning materials science, biomedical engineering, and body-integrated technology. Born in Istanbul, she earned her doctorate in materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studying patterning techniques and piezoelectric biomedical systems. Her doctoral research included flexible energy harvesters, wearable blood-pressure sensors, and stretchable patches for measuring skin mechanics. Before joining MIT’s faculty, she was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows and conducted postdoctoral research at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. There, her work included minimally invasive neural interfaces designed to deliver drugs and modulate neural activity.

At the Media Lab, the Conformable Decoders group investigates how materials, device design, and fabrication can make small electromechanical systems adapt mechanically to the objects or bodies they study. Its research premise is that physical patterns—including heartbeats, respiration, muscle movements, and neural activity—carry information that suitable interfaces can collect and interpret. The group also considers patterns in the natural environment, such as airflow, humidity, and temperature changes. Its stated goal is to turn those patterns into useful signals or energy. This combination of materials engineering, sensing, and biological questions helps explain the interdisciplinary character of Dağdeviren’s research leadership, while remaining distinct from the forum membership itself.

Her WHx leadership adds a program-level women’s health focus to that laboratory work. The Media Lab describes WHx as combining artificial intelligence, wearable technology, and biomedical research to address health needs that have received insufficient attention. Its three pillars are research, education, and translation: advancing knowledge, preparing health innovators through fellowship and mentoring opportunities, and moving findings toward accessible applications. The program identifies four research areas—sex-based differences in disease, reproductive health and technology, women’s mental health, and aging. Those priorities establish the scope of the MIT program Dağdeviren leads; they are not newly announced activities of IWF/MA or projects created by her membership in the forum.

Scientific Leadership and Support for Other Women

Dağdeviren’s public-facing work also extends beyond directing research. Her MIT biography notes appearances at global forums, including the United Nations, where she has discussed inclusive innovation and opportunities for women and girls in technology. It records her inclusion in the BBC’s 100 Women list in 2023, tenure at MIT in 2025, and induction into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows in 2026. Within WHx, education and collaboration are explicit program aims: its innovation fund supports cross-lab and external work, educational initiatives, fellowship opportunities, and public engagement. Together, these responsibilities describe a leadership profile that includes scientific investigation, training, and communication.

The forum’s own expectations place comparable emphasis on contribution as well as accomplishment. Its criteria ask whether members are willing to share their capabilities and participate in programs, activities, or committees, while its onboarding guidance provides for new members to be paired with a volunteer “New Member Buddy.” The nomination process also asks how a candidate’s experience could benefit the wider membership, making participation a two-way proposition rather than simply a credential. These are general features of the community Dağdeviren is joining, not confirmation of a personal assignment or timetable. The verified development remains her welcome into that peer network, with any specific future activities or collaborations yet to be announced.