Richard K. Lester is Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the founding Director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center.
Lester received his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Imperial College, London (1974), and was awarded a Kennedy Scholarship to study at MIT (1974-76), where he received a doctorate in nuclear engineering (1979). From 1977-78 he was a Visiting Research Fellow in International Relations at the Rockefeller Foundation. He has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1979.
First at the Rockefeller Foundation and later as a member of the MIT faculty, Lester developed a number of projects focusing on the management and international control of nuclear technology. During the mid-1980s he led a pioneering study of the role of innovative nuclear power technologies in restoring the economic viability and social acceptability of nuclear power in the United States and elsewhere. He also made contributions to the field of nuclear waste management, introducing the nation's first graduate course on this subject, serving on the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Radioactive Waste Management, and publishing (with co-author Mason Willrich), Radioactive Waste: Management and Regulation (Free Press, 1978). During this period he held the Atlantic Richfield Professorship in Energy Studies at MIT.
In 1986, as an Associate Professor of Nuclear Engineering, he was appointed Executive Director of the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity, and led the research that culminated in the publication of Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge (MIT Press, 1989.) With over 300,000 copies in print in eight languages, Made in America is the best-selling title in the history of MIT Press.
In 1992 Lester founded the MIT Industrial Performance Center. As director of the Center, Lester works with faculty and students from all five of MIT's Schools on a broad range of interdisciplinary research projects concerning the uses of science and technology in industry and the implications of these developments for productivity and society.
Lester's current research projects include a study of globalization and its implications for productivity, innovation, and job creation in five industries, and an international comparative study on the economic role of the research university. He is also participating in an MIT study on the future of nuclear power.
Lester's recent books include The Productive Edge (W.W. Norton, 1998), an analysis of America's industrial resurgence during the 1990s, Made By Hong Kong (Oxford University Press, 1997), co-authored with Suzanne Berger, and Making Technology Work: Case Studies in Energy and the Environment (Cambridge University Press, 2003), co-authored with John M. Deutch. He is currently completing a book with Michael Piore on the role of interpretive processes in design and innovation.
Lester serves as an advisor or consultant to corporations, governments, and private foundations and non-profit groups, and lectures frequently to academic, business and general audiences throughout the world on developments in the industrial economy. He currently serves as a trustee of the Kennedy Memorial Trust of the United Kingdom.