Amy Brand Named New Director of the MIT Press

From MIT News:

The MIT Press has named Amy Brand PhD ’89, an executive with a wide array of experience in academic publishing and communications, as its new director. She will begin in this position on July 20.
Brand has previously worked at multiple universities in publishing and scholarly communications — including a period as an editor at the MIT Press — in addition to holding leadership roles with independent firms that facilitate scholarly publishing and research. Her doctorate is in cognitive science, a traditional area of strength at the press.
“I am thrilled to be returning to MIT as director of the MIT Press,” Brand told MIT News. “My years as a graduate student and at the press were among the most gratifying in my career, and it is especially exciting to make this homecoming and assume leadership of the press at a time when academic publishers are being challenged to reinvent themselves. Like the Institute itself, the MIT Press has a stellar reputation and a history of taking risks, and I’m looking forward to breaking new ground.”
MIT hired Brand after an extensive search run by a committee composed of both MIT-based members and external experts in academic publishing.
“Amy’s breadth of experience across many sectors of the scholarly communication system make her the ideal leader for the MIT Press at this time of tremendous change and opportunity in scholarly publishing,” says Chris Bourg, director of the MIT Libraries, who chaired the search committee for the position.
Most recently, since early 2014, Brand has been a vice president at Digital Science, a firm that produces software for scientific research and is a division of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, the majority owner of Springer Nature, publisher of the journal Nature, among other titles.

Read the Complete Announcement

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