Edmund Bertschinger

Ed Bertschinger is a Professor of Physics at MIT with an affiliation in the MIT Program in Women’s and Gender Studies. He is a scholar-activist for justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in higher education. After joining the MIT faculty in 1986, he learned quickly that the surest pathway to scientific achievement was through mentoring of his own graduate students and postdocs in theoretical astrophysics and cosmology. A passion for mentoring faculty led to his becoming the Department Head for six years starting in 2007 during which he focused on improving equity, diversity, and inclusion. Following that service, Ed became MIT’s inaugural Community and Equity Officer from 2013–2018. He has served on numerous national committees and task forces on equity in physics and astronomy including https://www.aip.org/teamup and in 2019 he co-founded an alliance of equity practitioners in the physical sciences https://www.aps.org/programs/innovation/fund/idea.cfm. In addition to teaching and mentoring in physics, and his research in organizational change to advance equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice, he teaches a popular course on science activism https://shass.mit.edu/news/news-2020-class-profile-science-activism-wgs-sts. He is a Fellow of the AAAS and the American Physical Society and the recipient of the MITMLK Leadership Award, the Outstanding Freshman Advisor Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and many other awards.