Faculty

Andrew W. Lo and Christopher Noe (senior lecturer in Accounting) each received an Outstanding Teacher Award at the MIT Sloan Excellence in Teaching Awards. Each year, students nominate instructors for these teaching awards and the final recipients are chosen based on the quantity and quality of their nominations.

The awards were announced for both of them at the 2026 MIT Sloan Excellence in Teaching Awards for the 2025-2026 academic year. A Zoom recording of the event can be seen here.
 

Kerry Siani (Class of 1958 Career Development assistant professor and assistant professor of Finance) and Christopher Noe (senior lecturer in Accounting) were each awarded the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching, established to honor educational innovation and excellence. The Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching Award is the most prestigious teaching prize offered by the School. The award was established in 2006 and is awarded each year to two MIT Sloan faculty members, as well as two electrical engineering and computer science faculty members, for their contributions to educational excellence at MIT.

The prize was announced for Siani and Noe at the 2026 MIT Sloan Excellence in Teaching Awards for the 2025-2026 academic year.  Additionally, Noe, along with Andrew W. Lo, won an Outstanding Teacher Award. A Zoom recording of the event can be seen here.
 

Mohammad Fazel-Zarandi, research scientist and senior lecturer, was named the MIT Sloan School Teacher of the Year. This is the third consecutive academic year that Fazel-Zarandi has been voted by students to receive this recognition. Each year, students nominate instructors for several teaching awards, and the final recipients are chosen based on the quantity and quality of their nominations.

The prize was announced for Fazel-Zarandi at the 2026 MIT Sloan Excellence in Teaching Awards for the 2025-2026 academic year. A Zoom recording of the event can be seen here.
 

Scott Stern won the 2026 Samuel M. Seegal Faculty Prize. The Seegal Prize is shared with the MIT School of Engineering and is awarded every other year to a professor “who inspires students in pursuing and achieving excellence.” The award was established by Paula Seegal-Thompson for her father, a member of the class of 1922. The Seegal faculty prize is selected by a review committee at MIT.

The prize was announced for Stern at the 2026 MIT Sloan Excellence in Teaching Awards for the 2025-2026 academic year. A Zoom recording of the event can be seen here.

Sharmila Chatterjee, senior lecturer in Marketing, has been selected to receive the 2026 Outstanding Veteran First-Year Advisor Award from the MIT Undergraduate Advising Center (UAC). This award is given to a veteran advisor who has been advising first-year students for over five years and who demonstrates “extraordinary dedication and commitment to helping students succeed.” The awards committee stated that this honor “recognizes a skilled advisor who repeatedly rises to the occasion and sets an example of what outstanding first-year advising and support looks like.”

Haihao Lu (Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Assistant Professor and assistant professor of Operations Research and Statistics) has received a 2026 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which is “dedicated to improving the welfare of all through the advancement of scientific knowledge.” This honor recognizes outstanding creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments; the achievements and potential of awarded Sloan Research Fellows “place them among the next generation of scientific leaders in the U.S. and Canada.”

Lu is one of eight MIT faculty members among the 126 Sloan Research Fellows chosen this year from over 1,000 nominations of early-career scholars by fellow scientists across seven fields — chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics (Lu's awarded area), neuroscience, and physics.  

The award was announced in February, and an MIT News article includes a profile of Lu and his research contributions.

S.P. Kothari (Gordon Y Billard Professor of Accounting and Finance, Emeritus) has received the American Accounting Association (AAA) Financial Accounting and Reporting Section (FARS) 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award. FARS president Shana Clor-Proell wrote that this honor recognizes Kothari’s “exceptional and sustained contributions to financial accounting research” and his “leadership in shaping thought within our discipline.” 

The award was presented during the 2026 FARS Midyear Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

Fiona Murray (William Porter (1967) Professor of Entrepreneurship and Professor of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management) has received an honorary degree of science from the University of Exeter (UK) “for her contribution to public service,” as “an expert in the formation and scaling of deep tech ventures that solve global challenges – most notably in defense, security, and resilience.”

This honor was announced online and formally bestowed in the university’s winter graduation ceremonies in December 2025 in Exeter.

Taha Choukhmane, Albert F. (1942) & Jeanne P. Clear Career Development Assistant Professor in Global Management and Assistant Professor of Finance, has won the 2025 TIAA Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security from the TIAA Institute.

Choukhmane’s winning paper, co-authored with Lucas Goodman (U.S. Department of the Treasury) and Cormac O’Dea (Yale University), is titled “Efficiency in Household Decision-Making: Evidence from the Retirement Savings of US Couples” (American Economic Review, 115 (5):1485-1519, May 2025). Professor Antoinette Schoar, one of the award judges, said, “This paper offers novel evidence that many couples leave substantial retirement savings unclaimed simply because they fail to coordinate contributions. This is a great example of how careful analysis combined with great data can shed light on important inefficiencies in household financial decisions — with practical implications for policy makers and individuals.” 

The award was announced and presented in January 2026, in Philadelphia, at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations held by the American Economic Association in conjunction with 66 other associations.

Dimitris Bertsimas (Boeing Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management; Professor of Operations Research; Associate Dean, Online Education & Artificial Intelligence; and Vice Provost for Open Learning) has received an honorary doctorate from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, where he graduated 40 years ago before obtaining his SM and PhD degrees at MIT.

This honor was formally bestowed in a ceremony in December 2025, in Athens, and was announced online (the linked page is in Greek but may be translated and includes a video of Bertsimas’s presentation, “A Journey from Operations Research to AI and to the Future,” with slides in English at 40:12 of the video). Attendees included representatives from the academic, scientific, and business communities, reflecting the broad scope and impact of Bertsimas’s work. The event’s opening address noted his international scientific renown and his decisive contributions to business research, artificial intelligence, and data science.