Leo Rafael Reif

Leo Rafael Reif was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, to Eastern European Jewish parents who immigrated to Venezuela in the late 1930s through Ecuador and Colombia. His father was a photographer, and the family spoke Yiddish and Spanish at home.

Reif received an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Carabobo in Valencia, Venezuela in 1973 and spent the next year as an assistant professor at the Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas. He earned a PhD electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1979 and then spent a year as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford.

Reif joined MIT in January 1980 as an assistant professor of electrical engineering. He was promoted to associate professor in 1983, received tenure in 1985, and was promoted to full professor in 1988. In 2004, he was named the Fariborz Maseeh Professor of Emerging Technology. His research centered on three-dimensional integrated circuit technologies and on environmentally benign semiconductor device fabrication. Reif was director of MIT's Microsystems Technology Laboratories, then associate department head for Electrical Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and EECS department head from 2004 to 2005.

As MIT's provost from 2005 to 2012, Reif promoted online learning for students both inside and outside MIT. The effort led to the creation of edX, a massive open online course founded by MIT and Harvard University in 2012.

In 2012, Reif was elected president of MIT, succeeding Susan Hockfield. In 2013, Reif was named co-chair of the Obama administration's Advanced Manufacturing Partnership Steering Committee "2.0."

To promote innovation in "tough-tech" science and engineering fields, in 2015 he presented an idea for an "innovation orchard" to provide space, mentorship, and bridge-funding for entrepreneurs to commercialize new science. The idea led to the creation of The Engine.

Beginning in 2017, Reif began to describe what he saw as a need for education combining expertise in computing and other fields. In a 2019 Financial Times op-ed, he coined the term "AI bilingual." In 2018, Reif announced the creation of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. The College aims to prepare students to harness the power of AI while weighing its ethical and social implications.

In January 2021, Reif defended Gang Chen in an open letter following Chen's arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on wire fraud and tax violation charges.

In February 2022, Reif announced his intention to step down as MIT president at the end of 2022, and return to the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science following a yearlong sabbatical.

Reif and his wife, Christine (Chomiuk), live in Newton, Massachusetts. They have a daughter, Jessica, and a son, Blake. Jessica is Dr. Reif's daughter from his first marriage.

Donations to MIT from Jeffrey Epstein

In 2019, in the wake of Jeffrey Epstein's indictment on child sex trafficking and subsequent suicide, it came to light that Epstein had contributed over $800,000 to MIT, much of it beginning in 2013 after he was initially convicted of child sex trafficking. In August 2019, Reif ordered an investigation by law firm Goodwin Procter into Epstein's connections with the university.

In a September 12, 2019 letter to the MIT community on the institute's website, Reif admitted he signed a 2012 thank you letter to Epstein for a gift to professor Seth Lloyd. In the open letter to the community, Reif said, "I apparently signed this letter on August 16, 2012, about six weeks into my presidency. Although I do not recall it, it does bear my signature." On September 18, he explained, "Many students have asked how I could have signed that acknowledgment letter without asking questions and how I could fail to remember it. The answer is simple: I did not recognize the name, and I sign many standard thank-you letters every week. That includes several hundred letters every year thanking individuals for contributions to the Institute."

In October 2019, Reif held a forum for the MIT community to discuss their concerns regarding MIT's ties to Epstein. Controversy continued even after the forum, including calls among the undergraduate student community for both Reif and Lloyd to resign from MIT.

In January 2020, a report from the investigation determined that Epstein had made a donation to Marvin Minsky in 2002, several donations to the MIT Media Lab, facilitated by Joi Ito, Joscha Bach, and Neri Oxman, and three donations to Seth Lloyd. Three MIT vice presidents were determined to have known of Epstein's conviction, but the report concluded that Reif did not play a role in approving the donations. Following the release of the report, Reif placed Lloyd on temporary paid administrative leave until a decision by a further review panel could be made.

In February 2020, Reif announced that MIT would donate $850,000 to four nonprofits that support survivors of sexual abuse.

Handling of scientific fraud allegations

In 2006, as MIT's provost, Reif was responsible for coordinating an investigation by the United States Department of Defense into allegations of scientific and financial fraud in an MIT Lincoln Laboratory study of a missile defense system, which were initially brought forward by Theodore Postol. Following the investigation, Reif determined that no academic misconduct took place, though Postol alleged that the MIT administration had intentionally hampered the investigation.

Aaron Swartz case

The Reif administration at MIT played an important role in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz, the founder of RSS and co-founder of Reddit, who was renowned for his anti-copyright (and "knowledge for all") activism on MIT campus.

Stephen Schwarzman funding protests

After the announcement of the Schwarzman College of Computing in 2019, some students and members of the MIT community criticized Reif's decision to accept funding from Stephen Schwarzman over his ties to Donald Trump and opposition to an affordable housing bill in California. During the opening ceremony for the Scharzman College of Computing, a group of roughly 150 to 300 students protested both outside the ceremony and next to Reif's office.