Institute-level themes and priorities

Dear members of the MIT community,

This past year, an important responsibility for me and many leaders at MIT has been addressing the impact on our campus community of the conflict, violence and humanitarian crisis in the Middle East. While we continue that important work, we’re driving efforts to advance MIT’s mission of research, education and service.

MIT is a community of brilliant individuals with boundless ideas and entrepreneurial spirit. Cultivating these individual strengths is essential – but I want to find ways to harness our collective power too. I believe there are many significant areas where, as a creative community, the people of MIT can do more together if the Institute actively fosters and supports new collaborations on compelling global problems.

This year, we’ll launch several efforts along these lines, at different scales and involving different fields. I write now to give you a sense of where we’re headed and the progress so far.

Launching the MIT Collaboratives

Through my listening tour and in conversations since, I’ve heard clearly that we could magnify MIT’s positive impact if we made it easier for faculty to “go big” – to pursue their most innovative ideas in their discipline, to collaborate with others outside their field on important problems and to explore fresh approaches to teaching our students.

In response – and in close consultation with deans and other faculty leaders – we’re developing a structure you’ll come to know as the MIT Collaboratives. Based on faculty interest, we’ll start with two:

• In October, we’ll have a formal kick-off for an MIT Collaborative grounded in the human-centered fields represented by our School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS). Features include a SHASS Plus Connectivity Fund (which will support collaborations between SHASS faculty and those from other schools), a Humanities Cultivation Fund, and a SHASS Education Innovation Fund. Faculty leaders and initial requests for proposals will be announced shortly.
• In December, we expect to share plans for an MIT Collaborative focused on life sciences and health. With the goal of inspiring and delivering high-impact solutions, the collaborative will spur interdisciplinary projects at the convergence of engineering, science, computing and AI, economics, business, policy and the humanities, and will forge productive new links between MIT and sector-leading hospitals and industry.

Both efforts will provide seed funding opportunities, multiple forums for “cross-pollinating” interaction, and infrastructure to facilitate novel approaches and collaborations.

We’re also hearing significant interest in developing new efforts in three other areas:

• Quantum science and technology
• New approaches to manufacturing
• And new approaches to education, focused both inside and outside the Institute. A new curriculum from MIT is a lever for changing the future. Expect to hear more late this fall from the Task Force on the Undergraduate Academic Program, as the task force seeks input on its initial findings. By next semester, we hope to offer an emerging strategy for MIT to help strengthen K-12 science and math education across the country.

Working closely with faculty, we’ll determine if these three additional areas would benefit from the MIT Collaboratives structure or whether they need a different approach. Stay tuned!

MIT GenAI Impact Consortium

Beyond our work to create the collaboratives, over the past year I’ve been inspired by our community’s surging interest in tackling big questions around the societal impacts of GenAI. Last fall, hundreds of students, faculty and staff enthusiastically participated in a multiday symposium that showcased the scope of GenAI work at the Institute and its potential to accelerate progress in many other fields. Remarkably, the “impact papers” that faculty produced last year in response to our bid for proposals have already garnered nearly 150,000 views, and the MIT Press is now developing a book featuring summaries of this work.

To make the most of this moment in AI’s development and to tap the significant interest from industry in supporting explorations like these, later this fall we will launch the GenAI Impact Consortium, which will enable collaborations between MIT faculty and industry on pressing problems that require MIT know-how. In addition to symposia and workshops, the consortium will provide support for visiting scientists, professional education for our industrial partners and enhanced opportunities for our students to interact with the firms involved.

The Climate Project at MIT

I’ve written to you several times about our ambitious effort to address our overheating planet – the Climate Project at MIT. As I wrote in July, momentum is building: We recently announced the faculty directors of our six Climate Missions, and we’re actively recruiting for the Climate Project’s overall leader, our new vice president for climate.

Later this month, we’ll hold a special symposium to introduce the newly named mission directors to our climate research community. The event will feature a keynote talk by Brian Deese, MIT Innovation and Climate Impact Fellow and former White House National Economic Council director, and a panel with the mission directors, moderated by Somini Sengupta, international climate reporter for the New York Times. Space constraints limit the in-person seating, so we’re also offering a webcast:

(Related: You can also learn more about ongoing efforts to use the campus as a test bed for decarbonization, as described on the Office of Sustainability website and in this MIT News story.)

Amplifying MIT’s policy influence

A throughline in all our efforts is a commitment to increasing MIT’s capacity to foster and inform evidence-based policymaking. Many universities have either technical know-how or policy expertise; MIT has the potential to help shape policy with a deep underpinning of technical strength. This is the vision, for instance, behind the new climate policy center at MIT Sloan, a pillar of the Climate Project at MIT.

More broadly, I have asked Maria Zuber, presidential advisor for science and technology policy, to reach out to the community this fall for input on how to amplify and optimize MIT’s campus-wide policy interests; no community is better equipped than ours to help devise policy solutions that foster the broadly beneficial adoption of new technologies and set sound guardrails for their use.  

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Faced with a host of problems at the intersection of science and society, the world is crying out for meaningful answers. I believe these new initiatives can help us – individually and together – deliver knowledge and solutions worthy of MIT.

I’m grateful to everyone working to move these efforts forward. I offer special thanks to Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of engineering and chief innovation and strategy officer, for his wide-ranging vision and enthusiastic leadership, and to Provost Cynthia Barnhart for her partnership in bringing these initiatives to life.

I look forward to joining all of you in focusing our strengths on the Institute’s essential mission.

Sincerely,

Sally Kornbluth
President