Professorships
For MIT faculty members—for professors everywhere—being the incumbent in a named professorship is a singular honor. It tells that scholar that the Institute has enormous respect for the quality of his or her research and teaching. The extra resources that accompany such positions also provide a professional flexibility that is prized by every professorship holder.
We welcome professorship support at all levels, and suggest that you search or browse to find the existing professorship fund that most closely suits your interests.
Endowing a professorship
Some donors choose to establish a new professorship, often building their funds to full endowment over a period of years by combining an outright gift with a pledge.
- Professorships are a way to reward great
teacher-researchers, as well as attract top new talent. They also strengthen
the Institute’s financial foundations, adding significantly to
an endowment that is modest compared to those of other leading universities. Cost
to fully endow: $3 million.
- Career Development Professorships are special awards made to more junior faculty members whose research promises to make a fundamental contribution to a field of broad importance to society at large. A career development professorship serves as an expression of faith in a younger teacher-researcher's promise, as testimony to the respect of his or her peers. Each brings with it a scholarly allowance that offers the incumbent greater flexibility to react quickly to new ideas, and to push for research breakthroughs. Such rapid response to new research often leads to major initiatives, which in turn helps attract significant external resources. Cost to fully endow: $2 million.
To speak with someone about a special gift to faculty professorships, please contact Philip A. Murphy, campaign director, Campaign for Students, at murphy99@mit.edu or 617.258.5557.
Versatile microbes
Prof. Edward DeLong
If someone discovered a new type of humanoid—a being that harnessed
sunlight for energy as plants do—news outlets from the networks
to supermarket tabloids would presumably trumpet the story for days.
But when Edward DeLong did something roughly similar, media attention
was modest.
Why? Mainly because DeLong studies organisms—bacteria—far
too small to merit much in the way of hoopla.
It had long been thought that in terms of the ability of bacteria to
harness sunlight, there were two main groupings, says DeLong, an MIT
civil and environmental engineering professor. “The idea was that
you have organisms that harbor chlorophyll, and they do photosynthesis,” he
notes, “and then there are the organisms that eat the photosynthesizers.”
But DeLong discovered ocean bacteria which draw on both sunlight and
microscopic prey for energy. The fact that such “hybrids” exist
wasn’t itself news: the trait had been reported in a few species
of a class of micro-organisms called archaea. But these organisms were
outliers.
“They’re found only in salty environments, like the Great
Salt Lake,” notes DeLong. Now, it appears that hybrids from the
bacteria kingdom exist in untold numbers world-wide.
The fact that many microbes function in unexpected ways has spurred
excited speculation about exploiting them. Ideas range from new antibiotics
to “bacterial fuel cells” that would end the world’s
energy woes.
The potential for such applications was one reason the Gordon and Betty
Moore Foundation is providing generous backing for DeLong and his colleagues.
DeLong himself believes there will be payoffs from his work, but notes
we still have a lot to learn about microscopic ocean life.
“We estimate over 99 percent of the microbes out there have yet
to be characterized,” he notes, “so the question is, How
well do we understand the key processes that are going on?”
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