M.I.T. Chooses Its Provost for President

L. Rafael Reif, provost of Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the last seven years, has been chosen as the institution's next president.

By TAMAR LEWIN

L. Rafael Reif, an electrical engineer who has been the provost of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the last seven years, has been chosen as the institution’s next president.

Mr. Reif, 61, will assume the presidency on July 2, succeeding Susan Hockfield, who in February announced her plans to resign.

As provost, Mr. Reif led the development of MITx and edX, the institute’s new online initiatives, expanded the institute’s global reach with projects in Abu Dhabi, Singapore and Russia, and helped foster the emergence of an innovation cluster adjacent to M.I.T. in Kendall Square. During the financial downturn that began in 2008, Mr. Reif led a process that eliminated a $50 million structural deficit.

Mr. Reif, who was born in Venezuela, has been at M.I.T. since 1980, serving as head of the department of electrical engineering and computer science, the institute’s largest department, before he became provost. He is known for his research on semiconductors.

At a news conference on Wednesday morning announcing his appointment, Mr. Reif told of growing up in a poor home, speaking Spanish and Yiddish, and coming to the United States as a graduate student, with little command of English, to prepare himself for an academic career, his dream for a better life.

Finding himself president of the institution, he said, is a humbling surprise.

"I cannot tell you it is a dream come true because it is a dream I never dared imagine," he said.

In response to questions, Mr. Reif said he believed the future of higher education would involve some hybrid of classroom and online learning. Mr. Reif has been one of the key forces behind the creation of MITx, the university’s initiative for offering free high-quality college courses online, which earlier this month morphed into edX, an online collaboration with Harvard.

NYT