User:Peter Hirst

About Peter Hirst
Dr Peter Hirst is Executive Director of Executive Education at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Born in Aberystwyth, Wales he attended primary school in the villages of Talybont, Ceredigion and Commins Coch, Ceredigion and secondary school at Penglais School, Aberystwyth. He went on to read sciences at the University of St Andrews, where he was awarded a first class bachelor's degree with honours in physics and electronics and a PhD in the physics of low pressure plasmas and high power microwave sources. Throughout his PhD, he was sponsored by the Defence Research Agency and employed as a Research Assistant in the Department of Physics. After completing his PhD, he stayed on as a self-funding Research Fellow for a further three years, supported by a variety of grants, sponsored research and consultancies. His research interests spanned gaseous electronics, microwave engineering, optical signal processing, atmospheric propagation of high power lasers and microwaves, pulsed power, neural network data analysis and science, technology and terrorism. While at St Andrews, he was an active member of the university community. He was a resident, senior student and then sub-Warden of David Russell Hall, then Deputy Warden and later the (second) Warden of New Hall (St Andrews).

Dr Hirst left the University of St Andrews in 1995 to become a Westminster Fellow and Senior Technology and Professional Officer in the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, where he advised members and Select Committees of the House of Commons and the House of Lords on science and technology policy issues in the physical sciences, defence and Information and Communication Technology. In 1998, he was recruited by the London School of Economics and Political Science to run the school's academic research and consulting company, Enterprise LSE Ltd. He left the LSE in 2002 to move to the USA where he currently resides, in Boston, MA.

On June 16, 2012, it was announced he was awarded the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the  Queen's Birthday Honours list for services to the promotion of UK/USA business and academia interests.