Marc Kastner

Marc Kastner joined the Department of Physics at MIT in 1973, where he became the Donner Professor of Science in the Department of Physics in 1989 and Dean of the School of Science in 2007. In 1993, he became director of the MIT Center for Materials Science and Engineering, which became the largest NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. In 1998 he left that position to become Head of the Physics Department..

As Dean, Marc was instrumental in securing the funding that led to the establishment of the new Simons Center for the Social Brain (a $26 million gift) as well as many new fellowships for graduate students, four new Faculty Chairs and support for research. His challenge is to support faculty and their research labs during this time of federal deficits and decline in government support for basic fundamental research.

Kastner has served as the MIT representative on the board of directors of BSA, which operates Brookhaven National Laboratory, as Chair of the Solid State Sciences Committee of the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences and as chair of the National Academy of Sciences NRC Board on Physics and Astronomy.

Kastner is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1995 he received the David Adler Lectureship Award of the American Physical Society, and in 2000 he won the Oliver E. Buckley Prize for condensed matter physics for his work on single-electron transistors. In 2010 Kastner joined the Science Advisory Board of the Gordon Moore Foundation.