Joseph F. Coughlin, PhD

Joseph F. Coughlin, PhD is Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab and leads the US Department of Transportation's New England University Transportation Center within the Center for Transportation & Logistics. His research examines how demography, combined with social trends and technology, will shape future innovations in business and government.

Coughlin is one of Fast Company Magazine’s ‘100 Most Creative People in Business. The Wall Street Journal named him one of America’s 12 pioneers inventing the future of retirement and aging.  He was awarded the Gerontological Society of America’s Maxwell A. Pollack Award for Productive Aging for demonstrated excellence in translating research into practical application and policy improving the lives of older people and received an honorary doctorate of science from the State University of New York for making great strides in meeting the needs of an aging society through advances in public policy and technology. In 2005 President George W. Bush appointed him to the White House Conference on Aging Advisory Committee where he served on the group’s Market Innovations sub-committee. Coughlin is a Behavioral Sciences Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and a Fellow of Switzerland's World Demographics & Ageing Forum.

His current research explores how global demographic transition and technology are converging to shape the future of transportation, the multigenerational workplace and real estate development. He teaches transportation policy and planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and demography and business in the Sloan School of Management's Advanced Management Program. He writes on the future of aging, technology and retirement for the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Slate and on his blog Disruptive Demographics. Coughlin can be followed on Twitter @josephcoughlin.