Nominate MLK Visiting Scholars for Academic Year 2025–2026

Dear colleagues,

The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professors and Scholars Program is now accepting nominations for the 2025–2026 academic year, and we encourage all of you to reach out through your networks and consider submitting a nomination.

For decades, MLK Scholars have been enriching the intellectual life of the Institute with their research and teaching while enhancing their own scholarship and creative outputs through interactions with our students and faculty. Our current cohort of scholars is right now broadening how our community members think and interact. Our labs, classrooms, and offices also benefit from their fresh experiences and expertise – from micromechanics and multiscale modeling, to Indigenous knowledge and practices, to transportation engineering, to fentanyl data standardization and dissemination. The MLK Scholars program remains a keystone effort for MIT to honor the life and legacy of Dr. King. 

An appointment as an MLK Scholar is available in any academic unit at MIT; they will also be considered in medicine, law, public service – any domain in which distinguished individuals can add to the intellectual life and sense of community at the Institute. MLK Scholars can be current faculty at other universities, or they can come from nonacademic organizations. MLK Scholar candidates must be nominated by an MIT faculty host, and nominations are submitted online through the host’s primary department, lab, or center.

Completed nominations, including all letters of endorsement, must be received by February 14, 2025. Decisions will be made by April.

If you have questions about this year’s nomination process, please contact MLK Scholars program director Beatriz Cantada.

Sincerely,

Cynthia Barnhart
Provost

Paula Hammond
Vice Provost for Faculty

Karl Reid
Vice President for Equity and Inclusion