Cynthia Barnhart (born 1962) is an American civil engineer and academic. She is the Chancellor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the first woman to hold that position, succeeding W. Eric Grimson in 2014. Barnharts work focuses on transportation and operations research; she is a professor in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and is an associate dean of the School of Engineering, serving a brief tenure as interim dean of engineering from 2010 to 2011.