Richard Lester is the founding director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center and a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT. His research focuses on industrial innovation and the private and public management of technology, with an emphasis on the energy and manufacturing sectors. He has led several major studies of national and regional competitiveness and innovation performance commissioned by governments and industrial groups around the world.

As director of the Industrial Performance Center (IPC), Dr. Lester works with faculty and students from all five MIT Schools on a broad range of multidisciplinary research projects concerning the uses of science and technology in industry and the implications for society and the global economy. His current projects include:

• Accelerating U.S. Energy Innovation, a project to develop a more effective institutional architecture for the U.S. energy innovation system.
• The Local Innovation Systems Project, an international research collaboration focusing on the technological transformation of industries in regional economies and the role of universities in that process.
• The IPC Globalization Study, an interdisciplinary investigation of the consequences of globalization and industrial re-organization for employment and innovation in North America, Europe, and Asia.
• The Innovation Benchmarking Project, an ongoing study of strategies for promoting creativity and innovation in research, product and service development.

Professor Lester's book on the sources of creativity and innovation in advanced economies, Innovation – The Missing Dimension, jointly authored with Michael J. Piore, was published by Harvard University Press in 2004. Other recent books include Making Technology Work: Applications in Energy and the Environment (Cambridge University Press, 2004), with John M. Deutch; and Global Taiwan (M.E. Sharpe, 2005), co-edited with Suzanne Berger. Professor Lester is also the author of The Productive Edge: A New Strategy for Economic Growth (W.W. Norton, 2000), Made By Hong Kong (Oxford University Press, 1997) with Suzanne Berger, and Made in America (MIT Press, 1989) with Michael Dertouzos and Robert Solow. (With over 300,000 copies in print in eight languages, Made in America is the best-selling title in the history of MIT Press.)

Professor Lester is also active in research on energy technology innovation, and co-teaches a popular MIT course on "Applications of Technology in Energy and the Environment." He is a co-author of the widely-cited MIT reports on The Future of Nuclear Power (2003) and The Future of Coal (2007), and has published many articles on the management and control of nuclear technology.

Professor Lester obtained his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Imperial College (London) and a doctorate in nuclear engineering from MIT. He has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1979. He serves as an advisor or consultant to corporations, governments, foundations and non-profit groups, and lectures frequently to academic, business and general audiences throughout the world.