Faculty Discuss the World at MIT

“It’s long been known that if you want the very best ideas, you have to look everywhere,” says professor Nergis Mavalvala PhD ’97, dean of the School of Science, in a recent video series called The World at MIT. 

The series features Mavalvala and 10 more professors, including two other alums: Roberto Rigobon PhD ’97 and Paolo Lozano SM '98, PhD '03. The three-minute videos “underscore MIT’s distinctive nature as a community that is at once profoundly American and deeply connected to the world,” according to Global MIT—the program that produced the series. Learn where faculty members came from and how they ended up at MIT. 

Mavalvala, MIT’s Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics. Watch the video to hear how Mavalvala went from growing up in Pakistan to joining MIT leadership. 

Rigobon, Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management and professor of applied economics. Rigobon grew up in Venezuela and didn’t realize until the end of high school that he had a gift for programming. That discovery changed the trajectory of his life. On working at MIT he says, “We’re always teaching and learning from each other…. We are a community that is diverse on the disciplines, is diverse on our histories, is diverse on who we are.” Watch the video. 

Lozano, the Miguel Alemán Velasco Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Lozano, who is from Mexico, says that MIT students are the best thing about the Institute. “I never imagined that I could be a professor in a place like MIT…. It’s a community that is very open to ideas.” Watch the video. 

Learn more about these and other MIT faculty by watching the series.