Duke provost Sally Kornbluth named MIT president

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has named Sally Kornbluth, the provost at Duke University, as its next president, succeeding Rafael Reif.

Professor Kornbluth was approved by a vote of the MIT Corporation after a process led by a 20-member presidential search committee. The Duke professor of biology and New Jersey native will take office at MIT in January. Professor Reif announced in February that he would step down at the end of 2022, after more than 10 years heading MIT, one of the world’s pre-eminent research institutions.

Professor Kornbluth said she was drawn by MIT’s global reputation for academics and innovation. “The ethos of MIT, where groundbreaking research and education are woven into the DNA of the institution, is thrilling to me,” she said.

The head of the governing MIT Corporation, Diane Greene, credited Professor Kornbluth with being “decisive and plain-spoken, a powerhouse administrator” who has put particular emphasis on issues of free speech and diversity.

“Sally Kornbluth is an extraordinary find for MIT,” said Ms Greene, a former chief executive officer of Google Cloud.

Professor Reif’s decade-long tenure included major growth in MIT’s physical campus and the technology-driven explosion of the adjacent Kendall Square neighbourhood, as well as advocacy for immigrants and new emphases on concerns surrounding sexual assault and mental health, and MIT’s aggressive defence of a Chinese-born professor caught up in the Trump-era crackdown on alleged research ties to Beijing.

He also faced major controversies in areas that include financial and personal ties between MIT leaders and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein; MIT’s financial and academic relations with Saudi Arabia; and the controversial sale of non-profit online course platform edX to the for-profit competitor 2U.

A native of Venezuela, Professor Reif joined MIT in 1980 as an assistant professor of electrical engineering, served seven years as provost, and became president in 2012. He plans next to take a sabbatical and then return as a professor of electrical engineering and computer science.

MIT’s announcement credited Professor Kornbluth with prioritising investments in faculty, especially from under-represented groups, and strengthening interdisciplinary research and education.

Professor Kornbluth earned her undergraduate degree in political science at Williams College, then received a scholarship from the University of Cambridge that led to a bachelor’s degree there in genetics from Cambridge in 1984.

She returned to the US and earned her doctorate in molecular oncology at Rockefeller University, followed by postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Diego. She joined the Duke faculty as an assistant professor of pharmacology and cancer biology in 1994, become an associate professor in 2000 and a full professor in 2005.

Her research at Duke concerns the biological signals that control cell division and destruction, which are processes critical to treating cancers and various degenerative disorders.

She comes to MIT with a close family tie – her son, Alex, is a doctoral student in electrical engineering and computer science at the institution. Her husband, Daniel Lew, is a professor of pharmacology and cancer biology at Duke, and their daughter, Joey, is a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com