Richard K. Lester

Richard K. Lester (born January 3, 1954, in Leeds, England) is an American nuclear engineer, educator, and author. He is the Japan Steel Industry Professor and Associate Provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he oversees the international engagements of the Institute. He previously served as Head of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT and is the founding Director and Faculty Chair of the MIT Industrial Performance Center.

Lester received his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Imperial College London (1974). He was a high-school athlete and musician and was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (1969–72). While at Imperial, he was awarded a Kennedy Scholarship to study at MIT (1974–76), where he received a doctorate in nuclear engineering (1979). From 1977–78 he was a Visiting Research Fellow in International Relations at the Rockefeller Foundation. He has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1979.

First, at the Rockefeller Foundation and later as a member of the MIT faculty, Lester developed a number of projects focusing on the management and international control of nuclear technology. During the mid-1980s, he led a study of the role of innovative nuclear power technologies in restoring the economic viability and social acceptability of nuclear power in the United States and elsewhere.

He also made contributions to the field of nuclear waste management, introducing the nation's first graduate course on this subject, serving on the National Academy of Sciences’ Board on Radioactive Waste Management, and publishing (with co-author Mason Willrich), Radioactive Waste: Management and Regulation (Free Press, 1978). He held the Atlantic Richfield Professorship in Energy Studies at MIT during this period.

In 1986, as an Associate Professor of Nuclear Engineering, he was appointed Executive Director of the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity and led the research that culminated in the publication of Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge (MIT Press, 1989.). An assessment of America's manufacturing performance and how to strengthen it, Made in America was widely influential in the U.S. and around the world and, for a while, was the best-selling volume in the history of MIT Press.

Returning to the themes of Made in America, he later authored The Productive Edge: A New Strategy for Economic Growth (W.W. Norton, 1998), an analysis of America's industrial resurgence during the 1990s.

In 2015 Lester began serving as MIT's first Associate Provost for International Activities. In this role, he led the development and implementation of a new MIT strategy for global engagement. His current responsibilities include overseeing processes to enable MIT to engage with the world effectively, with responsible management of risks, and in keeping with the values of the MIT community. He continues to conduct research on strategies for achieving decarbonization of the global energy system while providing adequate supplies of affordable energy to the world's population.