Richard Lester named associate provost for international activities

In new role, longtime NSE professor will assume responsibility for MIT's major international efforts

MIT News Office

Richard Lester   (Photo: Justin Knight)

Richard Lester, the Japan Steel Industry Professor and currently the head of MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), has been named associate provost for international activities, effective July 1.

Provost Martin Schmidt announced Lester’s appointment today in an email to the MIT faculty.

“In his new role, Richard will advise the administration on all matters pertaining to the Institute’s major international activities,” Schmidt wrote. “He will have responsibility for the periodic review of our ongoing global efforts as well as for the assessment of proposed international initiatives.”

A member of the faculty since 1979, Lester will be MIT’s first associate provost for international activities. Last November, President L. Rafael Reif announced that Claude Canizares would step down as vice president, effective June 30, and that oversight for international engagements, which had been part of his portfolio, would shift to a new position within the Office of the Provost.

“By many measures MIT is already a global university,” Lester says. “But what kind of a global university do we want to be? And how can we be a great global university in a way that strengthens our Cambridge campus as one of the world’s pre-eminent centers of scientific discovery and technological innovation? I am looking forward immensely to working on these very important questions for MIT with our faculty and with everyone who cares about the future of this great institution.”

In Lester’s six years as head of NSE, the department has seen rapid rebuilding and renewal. As the School of Engineering begins a search for his successor as department head, Lester will continue in that role until Sept. 1.

Lester is the faculty chair and founding director of the Industrial Performance Center. His research focuses on local, regional, and national systems of innovation, with a particular focus on the energy and manufacturing sectors. He has led several major studies of competitiveness and innovation performance commissioned by governments and industrial groups around the world.

Lester obtained his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Imperial College and earned his PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT in 1979. He serves as an advisor to corporations, governments, foundations, and nonprofit groups, and is chair of the National Academies’ Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy.

Schmidt noted in his letter that in his new capacity, Lester will assume the role of co-chair, with Philip Khoury, associate provost and Ford International Professor, of the International Advisory Committee, as well as co-sponsor, with Executive Vice President and Treasurer Israel Ruiz, of the International Coordinating Committee.http://mitei.mit.edu/news/richard-lester-named-associate-provost-international-activities

From Richard Lester to me:
"

Leading NSE for the past six years has been one of the great privileges of my professional life, and the Department has made remarkable progress over this period.  We have redefined, strengthened, and broadened the intellectual core of our field, and we have become a more cohesive unit as a result.  We have implemented the most far-reaching changes to our doctoral program in many decades – changes that have introduced greater transparency, flexibility, and learning efficiency for our students.  We have developed and implemented a new graduate core curriculum, and now a reform of our undergraduate program is underway.  We have laid the foundations for a strong nuclear security program.  Our Science-Systems-Society educational triad is robust.  We have significantly upgraded the quantity and quality of our communications, both within MIT and externally.  We have introduced a new Communication Lab, based on a student peer-counseling model, that already in its first semester has served more than a third of our students.  Our research volume has more than doubled in the last four years.  And the Department has become a recognized leader in concept development, entrepreneurship, and policy innovations for advanced nuclear power systems. 

I am especially pleased that we have achieved all this while preserving the collegial culture for which NSE has long been known at MIT.  But what I am most proud of is the rapid development of our exceptional young faculty.  Fully two-thirds of the NSE faculty weren’t here 8 years ago.   Since my term began, seven young professors have earned a total of 12 promotions, including four awards of tenure (a fifth young colleague was brought here with tenure.)   A few years ago we were the oldest faculty (on average) in the School of Engineering.   Today we are the youngest (the median age of our faculty is 39, compared with the SOE median of 50).  Our cohort of future leaders is strong, and today NSE is well-positioned to lead our field -- and MIT -- into an exciting new era of nuclear research and education.   Nuclear science and technology will play a vital role in addressing the 21st century’s greatest challenges – in climate and energy, water, human health, environmental quality, and national and international security -- and in the coming decades new applications of nuclear phenomena will be developed that we cannot now even imagine.  NSE today is a strong department in a strong school, and I’m confident that, building on the excellence of NSE’s people, MIT will be a leading hub of innovation in nuclear education and research for the 21^st century."