Pesident, National Academy of Engineering
President Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Charles M. Vest hails from Morgantown, West Virginia. He earned a B.S.M.E degree in mechanical engineering from West Virginia University in 1963, and M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan, in 1964 and 1967, respectively. Dr. Vest is president emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), having stepped down in December 2004 after 14 years in that post, and is a member of the MIT mechanical engineering faculty.

Dr. Vest became the fifteenth president of MIT on October 15, 1990. In recognition of the increasing interdependence of economic, technological, environmental, and political systems both in the United States and throughout the world, Dr. Vest's priorities during his tenure as president of MIT included building a stronger international dimension into education and research programs, developing stronger relations with industry, enhancing racial and cultural diversity within MIT, and rebuilding public understanding and support of higher education and research. In this latter capacity, he served for seven years as university vice chair of the Council on Competitiveness and as vice chair and chair of the Association of American Universities (AAU). Dr. Vest has been a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology since 1994. From 1990 to 1999 he served on the Massachusetts Governor's Council on Economic Growth and Technology, and in 1993 and 1994 he chaired the President's Advisory Committee on the Redesign of the Space Station. He chaired the U.S. Department of Energy Task Force on the Future of Science Programs from 2002 to 2003. In February 2004, he was appointed by President Bush to serve as a member of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (the Robb-Silberman Commission). He served as a member of the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education (the Spellings Commission) that issued its report in September 2006. He currently is a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Transformational Diplomacy, and of the Rice-Chertoff Secure Borders and Open Doors Advisory Committee.

Prior to assuming the MIT presidency, Dr. Vest was the provost and vice president for academic affairs of the University of Michigan. He had been dean of engineering at the university from 1986 through 1988, and associate dean for academic affairs from 1981 to 1986. He was a visiting faculty member at Stanford University (1974-75), and served as head of the interferometric holography group of Willow Run Laboratories (1970-73). He joined the University of Michigan's mechanical engineering faculty in 1968 as an assistant professor, became an associate professor in 1972, and a full professor in 1977.

Dr. Vest was elected a member of the NAE in 1993, and has served as an NAE Councilor since July 2005. He is co-chair of the Committee on Technical and Privacy Dimensions of Information for Terrorism Prevention and Other National Goals. Dr. Vest served on the Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century: An Agenda for American Science and Technology, which produced the report, “Rising above the Gathering Storm.” He has served as a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Commission on Scientific Communication and National Security, and the National Academies-CSIS collaborative Roundtable on Scientific Communication and National Security. He also served as a member of the National Research Council (NRC) Board on Engineering Education, the NAE committee on the Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century, the NAE Committee on Public Awareness of Engineering, the NAE Fourth Decade Committee, the NRC Panel for Materials Science and Engineering, and the NRC Panel for Nondestructive Evaluation.

Dr. Vest's research interests are in the thermal sciences and in the engineering applications of lasers and coherent optics. He is author of numerous papers on these subjects and a book entitled Holographic Interferometry, and of two books on higher education and research. He was associate editor of the Journal of the Optical Society of America and served as a consultant to several companies and laboratories. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the Association for Women in Science, and a member of Tau Beta Pi, Pi Tau Sigma, and Sigma Xi. He has received ten honorary degrees: in 1992 from the Michigan Technological University, in 1994 from West Virginia University, in 1998 from the University of Notre Dame and the Illinois Institute of Technology, in 1999 from the Musashi Institute of Technology (Japan), in 2002 from North Carolina State University, in 2005 from Colorado School of Mines and Harvard University, and in 2006 from Ohio University and Cambridge University (UK). In 2000 he was awarded the NAE's Arthur M. Bueche Award and in 2002 the ABET President's Award from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. He is the 2006 recipient of the Phillip Hauge Abelson Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Vest is a director of IBM and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, a former trustee of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, and was a member of the Corporation of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and an ex officio institutional trustee of the WGBH Educational Foundation. He is chair of the advisory board of TIAX LLC, a founding member of the Board of Associates of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and a member of the board of directors of the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute and of Math for America. He is a trustee of In-Q-Tel, Ithaka Harbors, and of the Kavli Foundation, and a Life Member of the MIT Corporation.