Dear Alumni and Friends,

Welcome to another academic year, filled with excitement for our scientific research program and fraught with the perils of an unpredictable funding landscape.

As you may have seen in the early summer, my colleague, Ian Waitz MIT Vice President for Research, issued a statement on behalf of the Institute outlining the dangers of the proposed changes to how the federal government sponsors research.

“The federal-university partnership envisioned by Vannevar Bush has succeeded for eighty years because the government invests in research across areas of national priority, selecting the best researchers to advance that work on the merits and then trusts those researchers to do it,” Ian wrote. I agree.

And yet those at the highest level are calling into question the very framework that favors merit, stability, and openness and that has given the nation an unparalleled scientific research program. The development of CRISPR gene-editing technology—in which MIT-affiliated researchers played a foundational role—was made possible in significant part by sustained federal investment. A decision whether or not to change these federal funding rules has been deferred to later in the year, but the threat is still very real.

We are lucky at the School of Science to have partners who see the long-term vision that brought us—and the world— major scientific discoveries. We honored one such visionary, Marilyn Simons, with the school’s inaugural 1932 Award. Together with her husband, the late Jim Simons ’58, the Simons Foundation has helped us in innumerable ways—from funding the renovation of the mathematics building to establishing professorships throughout the school and, always, at their core, providing unwavering support of fundamental science.

We are also grateful to other homegrown heroes such as Curt Marble ‘63 who have recently donated $10 million to an instrumentation fund to develop technologies for use on the Giant Magellan Telescope, which our researchers at MIT Kavli Institute will have access to because of a transformative gift from Terry Ragon ’72. Early next year, I’m hoping I’ll get to tour the GMT site. I’m certain the visit will be one of the highlights of my academic year, learning about our MKI research projects studying the skies over in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

As we continue to navigate the shifting sands of our federal funding sources, we look to those who help us reinvent the future. Those guides—our colleagues, our friends, our philanthropic partners—keep us on the path to scientific excellence done by the best students and researchers in the world. For that, I thank you.

This coming year, we are moving Science@MIT to digital format. Please look for us in November and again in March as we streamline our efforts to bring you stories of your philanthropy in (scientific) action. Of course, you can always follow all our daily science news on our social media: LinkedIn, Instagram, and X.

And know that I always want to hear from you. Do you have thoughts on our move to digital? On the new Quantum Systems Laboratory? About our work on the Climate Project?Write to me at scncinfo@mit.edu.

Dean Nergis Mavalvala PhD ‘97