Just as the United States has prospered through its ability to draw talent from every corner of the globe, so too has MIT thrived as a magnet for the world’s most keen and curious minds — many of whom remain here to invent solutions, create companies, and teach future leaders, contributing to America’s success.
President Ronald Reagan remarked in 1989 that the United States leads the world “because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation.” Those words ring still ring true 36 years later — and the sentiment resonates especially at MIT.
"To find people with the drive, skill, and daring to see, discover, and invent things no one else can, we open ourselves to talent from every corner of the United States and from around the globe,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “MIT is an American university, proudly so — but we would be gravely diminished without the students and scholars who join us from other nations."
MIT’s steadfast commitment to attracting the best and brightest talent from around the world has contributed to not just its own success, but also that of the nation as whole. MIT’s stature as an international hub of education and innovation adds value to the U.S. economy and competitiveness in myriad ways — from foreign-born faculty delivering breakthroughs here and founding American companies that create American jobs to international students contributing over $264 million annually to the U.S. economy during the 2023-24 school year.
Highlighting the extent and value of its global character, the Office of the Vice Provost for International Activities recently expanded a new video series, “The World at MIT.” In it, 20 faculty members born outside the United States tell how they dreamed of coming to MIT while growing up abroad and eventually joined the MIT faculty, where they’ve helped establish and maintain global leadership in science while teaching the next generation of innovators. A common thread running through their stories is the importance of the campus’s distinct nature as a community that is both profoundly American and deeply connected to the people, institutions, and concerns of regions and nations around the globe.
Joining the MIT faculty in 1980, MIT President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif knew almost instantly that he would stay.
“I was impressed by the richness of the variety of groups of people and cultures here,” says Reif, who moved to the United States from Venezuela and eventually served as MIT’s president from 2012 to 2022. “There is no richer place than MIT, because every point of view is here. That is what makes the place so special.”
The benefits of welcoming international students and researchers to campus extend well beyond MIT. More than 17,000 MIT alumni born elsewhere now call the United States home, for example, and many have founded U.S.-based companies that have generated billions of dollars in economic activity.
Contributing to America’s prestige internationally, one-third of MIT’s 104 Nobel laureates — including seven of the eight Nobel winners over the last decade — were born abroad. Drawn to MIT, they went on to make their breakthroughs in the United States. Among them is Lester Wolfe Professor of Chemistry Moungi Bawendi, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2023 for his work in the chemical production of high-quality quantum dots.
“MIT is a great environment. It’s very collegial, very collaborative. As a result, we also have amazing students,” says Bawendi, who lived in France and Tunisia as a child before moving to the U.S. “I couldn’t have done my first three years here, which eventually got me a Nobel Prize, without having really bold, smart, adventurous graduate students.”
The give-and-take among MIT faculty and students also inspires electrical engineering and computer science professor Akintunde Ibitayo (Tayo) Akinwande, who grew up in Nigeria.
“Anytime I teach a class, I always learn something from my students’ probing questions,” Akinwande says. “It gives me new insights sometimes, and that’s always the kind of environment I like — where I’m learning something new all the time.”
MIT’s global vibe inspires its students to not only explore worlds of ideas in campus labs and classrooms, but to journey the world itself. Forty-three percent of undergraduates pursued international experiences during the last academic year — taking courses at foreign universities, conducting research, or interning at multinational companies. MIT students and faculty alike are regularly engaged in research outside the United States, addressing some of the world’s toughest challenges and devising solutions that can be deployed back home, as well as abroad. In so doing, they embody MIT’s motto of “mens et manus” (“mind and hand”), reflecting the educational ideals of MIT’s founders who promoted education for practical application.
As someone who loves exploring “lofty questions” along with the practical design of things, Nergis Mavalvala found a perfect fit at MIT and calls her position as the Marble Professor of Astrophysics and dean of the School of Science “the best job in the world.”
“Everybody here wants to make the world a better place and are using their intellectual gifts and their education to do so,” says Mavalvala, who emigrated from Pakistan. “And I think that’s an amazing community to be part of.”
Daniela Rus agrees. Now the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Rus was drawn to the practical application of mathematics while still a student in her native Romania.
“And so, now here I am at MIT, essentially bringing together the world of science and math with the world of making things,” Rus says. “I’ve been here for two decades, and it’s been an extraordinary journey.”
The daughter of an Albert Einstein afficionado, Yukiko Yamashita grew up in Japan thinking of science not as a job, but a calling. MIT, where she is a professor of biology, is a place where people “are really open to unconventional ideas” and “intellectual freedom” thrives.
“There is something sacred about doing science. That’s how I grew up,” Yamashita says. “There are some distinct MIT characteristics. In a good way, people can’t let go. Every day, I am creating more mystery than I answer.”
For more about the paths that brought Yamashita and others to MIT and stories of how their disparate personal histories enrich the campus and wider community, visit the “World at MIT” videos website.
“Our global community’s multiplicity of ideas, experiences, and perspectives contributes enormously to MIT’s innovative and entrepreneurial spirit and, by extension, to the innovation and competitiveness of the U.S.,” says Vice Provost for International Activities Duane Boning, whose department developed the video series. “The bottom line is that both MIT and the U.S. grow stronger when we harness the talents of the world’s best and brightest.”
