NSE - Nuclear Science & Engineering at MIT

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Michael J. Driscoll Graduate Fellowship
in Nuclear Science and Engineering

The Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering has launched a campaign to endow a Graduate Fellowship in honor of Professor Michael J. Driscoll, who is celebrating his 80th birthday this year. A $1 million endowment will support the Fellowship in perpetuity.

Impact of the Driscoll Fellowship

The Department’s need for graduate fellowship funding, particularly support for first year students, continues to grow. Our graduate enrollment is increasing, and to retain a healthy balance between fellowship and research assistantship funding for our students we need to build our portfolio of fellowships.

Today NSE is working to make nuclear power the safest, most economical, and most environmentally benign source of energy, while also laying the foundations for exciting new applications of nuclear science and technology.

The Driscoll Fellowship will create new opportunities for our students to contribute to the development of the innovative nuclear reactor and fuel cycle systems that will be needed for a major global expansion of nuclear energy.

How to Contribute

To make a gift to the Michael J. Driscoll Graduate Fellowship or to request additional information, contact Edith Wun, NSE Leadership Giving Officer, ewun@mit.edu. You may also or visit our page at Giving to MIT..


Professor Michael Driscoll

Professor Michael J. Driscoll

Professor Driscoll, whose contributions to the field of nuclear engineering span seven decades (from the 1950s until today), has been a member of our Department for half a century. During his decades of dedicated, highly productive service on the MIT faculty, Mike has enriched the lives of a remarkable number of students, and his work as an outstanding educator and generous mentor continues today.

Born in Peekskill, NY in 1934, Michael J. Driscoll received his B.S. in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon, and shortly afterwards joined the Nuclear Navy. As a commissioned officer he worked as an engineer in support of the Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, as well as the first nuclear power plants. He subsequently enrolled as a graduate student in the MIT Nuclear Engineering Department (as it then was), obtained his doctorate under the supervision of Professor Irving Kaplan, and joined the Department’s faculty in 1966. Since then he has supervised almost 200 doctoral, master’s and engineer’s theses in the Department, many of these in the years since his official retirement (Mike has brought new meaning to the term ‘retired’!), and a much larger number of MIT students have benefited from taking his classes. His research — in fields such as reactor analysis, thermal and fast reactor engineering, fuel management, and fuel cycle engineering and analysis, including uranium extraction from seawater and deep borehole disposal of high-level waste — continues to have significant impact today.