MIT’s Joel Dawson — Honors, Family and Music

Professionally, Dawson is working to make wireless data transfers faster, with less power drain.

“We work on microchips for wireless systems, the kind of electronic components that go into your cellular phone or cellular base stations, or wireless routers; the thing that pushes radio waves out over the antenna,” Dawson said. “I wish I could take credit for inventing them, but we’re trying to improve them.”

His 2003 PhD from Stanford was in electrical engineering and his 1997 Master’s from MIT was in electrical engineering and computer science. His 1996 BS from MIT was in electrical engineering, And he minored in music, which has mattered.

His professional life is about circuits and transmitter architecture. The other part of his life is about family, chamber music and, when there’s time, his motorcycle.

He met his wife, humanities scholar Marisol Negron, when they were PhD students at Stanford. She teaches Latino literary and cultural studies in the American Studies department at UMass Boston.

And although Dawson has less free time, what with the couple’s new baby boy, Joel, he plays viola and violin.

He learned viola as a child, was a music minor as an MIT undergrad and got deeply into it at Stanford.

” I was there for my graduate work in electrical engineering, but I wound up studying music with one of the music faculty,” he said. “I had a wonderful teacher who encouraged me to play the violin as well. I’m just getting to the point where I’m pretty comfortable on both, but viola still feels like home,” he said.

MIT students and faculty have been treated to his music.

“The biggest tool that I’ve found for keeping up music is to schedule performances. Evelyn Wang in the mechanical engineering department plays piano very well, so what we’ll do is we’ll schedule recitals a couple of months in advance and invite all our friends and colleagues, typically in Killian Hall.

“It’s something I really enjoy. It helps to make me happy, and as a result I’m more productive and creative in my professional work.”

And there’s his motorcycle, a 1500-cc Honda Valkyrie.

“I’d always been interested in motorcycles, to my mom’s horror. So it never happened growing up. [But] you go out to California and there are beautiful motorcycles everywhere. So I took a safety class, learned how to ride, and bought this old Honda Nighthawk for $500 and started riding. When i got a job, I got a nice motorcycle. It’s a big, smooth six-cylinder monster.”