Duke Provost Sally A. Kornbluth will become the next president of the Massachusetts Institute of ... [+]
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced today that Sally A. Kornbluth, the current provost at Duke University, has been selected to become its 18th president.
Kornbluth, who will assume the presidency on January 1, 2023, will succeed L. Rafael Reif, who revealed in February of this year that he would be stepping down from the presidency at the end of 2022, after leading the Institute for more than ten years. Before becoming president, Reif was a member of the MIT faculty since 1980 and served as MIT’s provost from 2005-2012.
Kornbluth, who has been provost at Duke for eight years, was selected following an eight-month process that involved a 20-person presidential search committee, with representation from across MIT. That presidential committee engaged directly with students, faculty, staff, and alumni to gather input on their ideas about the next president and their aspirations for MIT.
“Dr. Sally Kornbluth is an extraordinary find for MIT,” says MIT Corporation Chair Diane B. Greene in the university’s announcement. “She is decisive and plain-spoken, a powerhouse administrator who has proactively embraced critical issues like free speech and DEI...Her vision and her humanity will inspire our hearts and minds, and her comprehension of the importance of discovery, innovation, and entrepreneurship will serve us well as MIT confronts the challenges of today’s world.”
A highly accomplished researcher, Kornbluth is currently the Jo Rae Wright University Professor of Biology at Duke where she has been a member of the faculty since 1994, first in the Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at the Duke University School of Medicine and then as a member of the Department of Biology in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences.
After earning her BA in political science from Williams in 1982, Kornbluth attended Cambridge University for two years as a Herchel Smith Scholar at Emmanuel College. She earned her BA in genetics from Cambridge in 1984. Kornbluth received her PhD in molecular oncology from Rockefeller University in 1989, and then completed a postdoc at the University of California at San Diego.
Her research has focused on cell proliferation and programmed cell death in a variety of organisms, and, among several key findings, her scientific work has demonstrated how cancer cells evade this programmed death, or apoptosis.
Kornbluth received the Basic Science Research Mentoring Award from the Duke School of Medicine in 2012 and the Distinguished Faculty Award from the Duke Medical Alumni Association in 2013. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
At Duke, Kornbluth is credited as being a leader of several of the university’s major academic and student initiatives, including the development of Duke’s strategic plan, called Together Duke. She also led an effort to strengthen science and engineering at Duke, which has resulted in the recent addition of more than two dozen Duke faculty members, with expertise in quantum computing, data science, materials science, and biological resilience.
Kornbluth also created an Office for Faculty Advancement that helped increase the number of Black faculty members across campus from 67 in 2017 to more than 100 currently.
“The ethos of MIT, where groundbreaking research and education are woven into the DNA of the institution, is thrilling to me,” Kornbluth said. “The primary role of academic leadership is in attracting outstanding scholars and students, and in supporting their important work. And when it comes to the impact of that work, MIT is unparalleled — in the power of its innovations, in its ability to move those innovations into the world, and in its commitment to discovery, creativity, and excellence.”
“My greatest joy as a leader has always been in facilitating and amplifying the work of others,” Kornbluth added. “I am eager to meet all the brilliant, entrepreneurial people of MIT, and to champion their research, teaching, and learning.”
Outgoing MIT President Reif was enthusiastic about the choice of Kornbluth. “The presidency of MIT is a wonderful responsibility,” he said. “Known for her brilliance, wide-ranging curiosity, and collaborative, down-to-earth style, Sally Kornbluth is a terrific choice to lead our distinctive community, and I look forward to seeing MIT continue to flourish under her leadership.”
