The title of Institute professor is an honor bestowed by the Faculty and Administration of MIT on a faculty colleague who has demonstrated exceptional distinction by a combination of leadership, accomplishment, and service in the scholarly, educational, and general intellectual life of the Institute or wider academic community. [1]
Contents
— MIT Policies and Procedures: Special Professorial Appointments, Institute Professor
Institute professor is the highest title that can be awarded to a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It is analogous to the titles of distinguished professor, university professor, or regents professor used at other universities in recognition of a professor's extraordinary research achievements and dedication to the school. At MIT, institute professors are granted a unique level of freedom and flexibility to pursue their research and teaching interests without regular departmental or school responsibilities; they report only to the provost. [1] Usually no more than twelve professors hold this distinction at any one time. [1]
Institute professors are initially nominated by leaders representing either a department or school. The chair of the faculty then consults with the Academic Council and jointly appoints with the president an ad-hoc committee from various departments and non-MIT members to evaluate the qualifications and make a documented recommendation to the president. The final determination is made based upon recommendations from professionals in the nominee's field. The case is then reviewed again by the Academic Council and approved by the executive committee of the MIT Corporation. [1] The position was created by President James R. Killian in 1951, and John C. Slater was the first to hold the title. [2]
Name | Department | Elected | Notability | Reference |
---|---|---|---|---|
Daron Acemoglu | Economics | 2019 | Author of Why Nations Fail ; John Bates Clark Medal (2005); Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (2024) | [3] |
Suzanne Berger | Political Science | 2019 | Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; chevalier of France's Legion of Honour (2009) | [4] |
Arup Chakraborty | Chemical Engineering | 2021 | Fellow of all three United States National academies; founding director of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science | [5] |
Sallie W. Chisholm | Civil and Environmental Engineering | 2015 | Discovery and biology of the Prochlorococcus marine cyanobacteria | [6] |
Ann Graybiel | Brain and Cognitive Sciences | 2008 | Expert on the basal ganglia; National Medal of Science (2001) | [7] [8] |
Paula T. Hammond | Chemical Engineering | 2021 | Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and all three United States National academies | [5] |
Robert S. Langer | Chemical Engineering & Biological Engineering | 2005 | Drug delivery and tissue engineering; youngest person to be elected to all three United States National academies; Millennium Technology Prize (2008), National Medal of Science (2007), Draper Prize (2002), and Lemelson-MIT Prize (1998) | [9] |
Thomas Magnanti | Mechanical Engineering | 1997 | Operations research; Dean of Engineering (1999–2007) | [10] |
Marcus Thompson | Music and Theater Arts | 2015 | Artistic director of Boston Chamber Music Society | [6] |
Name | MIT department | Current institution | Elected | Notability | Reference |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
David Baltimore | Biology | Caltech | 1995 | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1975) | [11] |
Name | Department | Elected | Notability | Reference |
---|---|---|---|---|
Emilio Bizzi | Brain and Cognitive Sciences | 2002 | Motor control; President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006–2009) | [12] |
Noam Chomsky | Linguistics and Philosophy | 1976 | Generative grammar; Kyoto Prize (1988); political activist and one of the most widely cited scholars alive [13] [14] | [15] |
John M. Deutch | Chemistry | 1990 | Director of Central Intelligence (1995–1996); Deputy Secretary of Defense (1994–1995); Provost of MIT (1985–1990) | [16] [17] |
Peter A. Diamond | Economics | 1997 | Social Security reform; Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2010) | [10] |
Jerome I. Friedman | Physics | 1991 | Quantum chromodynamics; Nobel Prize in Physics (1990) | [18] |
John Harbison | Music and Theater Arts | 1995 | MacArthur Fellow (1989); Pulitzer Prize for Music (1987) for The Flight into Egypt | [11] |
Barbara Liskov | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | 2008 | Contributions to data abstraction and programming languages; Turing Award (2008) and John von Neumann Medal (2004) | [19] |
John D.C. Little | Management | Little's law and Branch and bound; contributions to marketing and e-commerce | [20] | |
Ron Rivest | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | 2015 | Co-inventor of the RSA algorithm; founder of Verisign and RSA Security | [6] |
Phillip Sharp | Biology | 1999 | RNA interference and splicing; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1993) | [21] |
Sheila Widnall | Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering | 1998 | Secretary of the Air Force (1993–1997); first woman to chair the MIT faculty; first MIT alumna appointed to MIT engineering faculty | [22] |
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and science.
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the most cited living authors, Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. In addition to his work in linguistics, since the 1960s Chomsky has been an influential voice on the American left as a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, and corporate influence on political institutions and the media.
John Mark Deutch is an American physical chemist and civil servant. He was the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1995 and Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from May 10, 1995, until December 15, 1996. He is an emeritus Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and serves on the boards of directors of Citigroup, Cummins, Raytheon, and Schlumberger Ltd. Deutch is also a member of the Trilateral Commission.
Gerald Wayne Clough is an American civil engineer and educator who is President Emeritus of the Georgia Institute of Technology and former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. A graduate of Georgia Tech in civil engineering, he was the first alumnus to serve as President of the Institute.
Morris Halle, né Pinkowitz, was a Latvian-born American linguist who was an Institute Professor, and later professor emeritus, of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The father of "modern phonology", he was best known for his pioneering work in generative phonology, having written "On Accent and Juncture in English" in 1956 with Noam Chomsky and Fred Lukoff and The Sound Pattern of English in 1968 with Chomsky. He also co-authored the earliest theory of generative metrics.
Richard Royce Schrock is an American chemist and Nobel laureate recognized for his contributions to the olefin metathesis reaction used in organic chemistry.
George McClelland Whitesides is an American chemist and professor of chemistry at Harvard University. He is best known for his work in the areas of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, organometallic chemistry, molecular self-assembly, soft lithography, microfabrication, microfluidics, and nanotechnology. A prolific author and patent holder who has received many awards, he received the highest Hirsch index rating of all living chemists in 2011.
Rafael Luis Bras is a Puerto Rican civil engineer best known for his contributions in surface hydrology and hydrometeorology, including his work in soil-vegetation-atmosphere system modeling.
Daniel Kleppner, born 1932, is the Lester Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-founder and co-director of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms. His areas of science include atomic, molecular, and optical physics, and his research interests include experimental atomic physics, laser spectroscopy, and high precision measurements.
The history of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology can be traced back to the 1861 incorporation of the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Society of Natural History" led primarily by William Barton Rogers.
Suh Nam-pyo was the thirteenth president of KAIST from 2006 until 2013, succeeding Robert B. Laughlin and succeeded by Sung-Mo Kang.
John Stewart Waugh was an American chemist and Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is known for developing average hamiltonian theory and using it to extend NMR spectroscopy, previously limited to liquids, to the solid state. He is the author of ANTIOPE, a freeware general purpose Windows-based simulator of the spectra and dynamics of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). He has also used systems of a few coupled spins to illustrate the general requirements for equilibrium and ergodicity in isolated systems.
Leo Rafael Reif is a Venezuelan American electrical engineer and academic administrator. He previously served as the 17th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2012 to 2022, provost of the institute from 2005 to 2012, and dean of the institute's EECS department from 2004 to 2005.
Nancy Hopkins, an American molecular biologist, is the Amgen, Inc. Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is known for her research identifying genes required for zebrafish development, and for her earlier research on gene expression in the bacterial virus lambda, and on mouse RNA tumor viruses. She is also known for her work promoting equality of opportunity for women scientists in academia.
Myles W. Jackson is currently the inaugural Albers-Schönberg Professor in the History of Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and lecturer with the rank of professor of history at Princeton University. He was the inaugural Albert Gallatin Research Excellence Professor of the History of Science at New York University-Gallatin, professor of history of the faculty of arts and science of New York University, professor of the division of medical bioethics of NYU-Langone School of Medicine, faculty affiliate of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy, NYU School of Law, and director of science and society of the college of arts and science at NYU. He was also the inaugural Dibner Family Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at Polytechnic Institute of New York University from 2007 to 2012. The chair is named after Bern Dibner (1897–1988), an electrical engineer, industrialist, historian of science and technology and alumnus of Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.
Ann Martin Graybiel is an Institute Professor and a faculty member in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She is an expert on the basal ganglia and the neurophysiology of habit formation, implicit learning, and her work is relevant to Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, obsessive–compulsive disorder, substance abuse and other disorders that affect the basal ganglia.
Suzanne Doris Berger is an American political scientist. She is the Raphael Dorman and Helen Starbuck Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and director of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative. A leading authority in comparative politics and political economy, she has pointed to the centrality of politics in mediating and redirecting ostensibly transcendent forces, such as economic modernization and globalization.
Gang Chen is a Chinese-born American mechanical engineer and nanotechnologist. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he is currently the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering. He served as head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT from July 2013 to June 2018. He directs the Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center, an energy frontier research center formerly funded by the United States Department of Energy. He was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2010 and of the National Academy of Sciences in 2023.
David John Rose (1922–1985) was a professor of nuclear engineering at MIT.