Managing Director
MIT China | Singapore | Australia | New Zealand
seang [at] mit.edu - (617) 253-5068
Sean Gilbert is the Managing Director of the MIT-China Program, MIT-Singapore Program, and the MIT-Australia & New Zealand Program.
Sean is responsible for developing projects across this Asia Pacific region with MIT students, faculty, and institutional partners. Key programs include the Fung Scholars Program; the MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node-MISTI Collaboration, industry collaborations for students in Singapore and Taiwan, and a new partnership on internships with the MIT Living Lab office in Adelaide, Australia. Sean founded the Singapore (2002) and Australia & New Zealand (2013) programs and is working on expanding MISTI Southeast Asia initiatives. Gilbert also manages the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science / MISTI partnership: EECS International/MISTI.
Prior to arriving at MIT in 2000, Sean co-founded EcoTrends International Co., Ltd in Taipei, importing environmental technologies and products for Taiwan construction sites (1997-2000); and worked for the Panvest Group's Offshore Investment Department, supervising Taiwanese-owned hotels in Hawaii and automotive and data processing joint ventures in Jinan, Shandong Province (1993-1997). Gilbert has also worked in New York as a reinsurance broker at Guy Carpenter & Company, placing European facultative and East Asian treaty risks with international reinsurance companies (1984-1986).
Sean holds a Master of Arts in Chinese Studies and a Princeton-in-Asia Teaching Certificate from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies & Chinese, with a Minor in Southeast Asian Cultural Anthropology, from New York University. He learned to speak Chinese initially through two years of language studies at National Taiwan Normal University (Mandarin Training Center) and Taipei Language Institute. Born in Shrewsbury, England; early childhood in Indooroopilly, Queensland, Australia; grew up in Sea Cliff, New York; studied and worked for 10+ years in East Asia.