Background: fall of 1978, and after I had just defended my PhD thesis at MIT and had just started working there as a Research Associate (postDoc). At that point in time, a faculty position at MIT was possible, but I had no concrete written offer. Things were up in the air and would depend on many things- I was also looking elsewhere, outside MIT.
I then received a visit from Dean Horn and another one from Dan Nyhart. The two visits were unrelated but turned out to be pivotal for one of my most important projects at MIT. They were also pivotal for the start of my academic career at MIT.
Dean Horn was not a dean at MIT. In fact, he wasn't even a faculty member. A former Navy captain, he was the director of the MIT Sea Grant College Program. He came to my office and talked to me about the so-called Henry L. Doherty endowed professorship in ocean utilization. The professorship was for junior faculty members, and it provided a $20,000 per year support for research in any topic in the "ocean utilization" area. To get the award, a candidate had to submit a research proposal. That was to be evaluated by the Sea Grant steering committee (consisting of several MIT faculty members), and the winner would get the award for 2 years starting July next (in this case, 1979). Horn told me that he wanted to encourage me to apply for the professorship.
The offer sounded interesting. I learned that the $20,000 a year was exempt from MIT overhead, and that made it even more attractive. Of course, I had to find a topic, and write a good proposal about it. I realized that many people were eligible for the award, and that many proposals would be submitted.
The second visit was from Dan Nyhart. Nyhart had a joint faculty appointment in Ocean Engineering and in the Sloan School. He was a lawyer, teaching "legal/regulatory" courses at MIT. In OE, he was interested in ocean law and the Law of the Sea, among other things. Nyhart asked me if I were interested in joining him in a research proposal for oil spill cleanup systems. He had recently participated in a meeting at Sea Grant with some industry representatives, and told me that there was strong interest in such a proposal from Congress. 1978 was the year of the AMOCO CADIZ oil spill in France, and the time was ripe for new research in this area. The way this worked was the following. We would submit a proposal to Sea Grant, which would then turn it over to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for evaluation and eventual funding. I then learned that Sea Grant was a national program within NOAA, that MIT Sea Grant was one of several Sea Grant colleges, and that NOAA belonged to the Department of Commerce.
The idea appealed to me, and I said yes. Nyhart and I would be the two co-principal investigators of the project, which was to start in July 1979 too (if successful). Since I had no idea on the subject, I started reading. I discovered that there were a lot of opportunities of using Operations Research (OR) techniques for addressing important decisions in oil spill cleanup. There was also a panel discussion at MIT on this topic. A Norwegian tanker owner, Erling Naess, was the keynote speaker.
It then occurred to me that in parallel to the oil spill proposal I would write with Nyhart, I could write an oil spill proposal for the Doherty professorship as well, and use the extra money as matching support. I discussed the idea with Ira Dyer, my Department Head, and he was positive. I decided for the Doherty proposal to focus on the "OR" aspects of the problem. Feedback from the proposal reviewers indicated I should focus on the "small spill" problem. I revised the proposal and waited for the final evaluation. That was scheduled for early spring 1979. In contrast, I would learn about the Sea Grant proposal a bit earlier, around January 1979.
Indeed, in early January 1979, Dyer walked into my office. He said he was just back from the Sea Grant committee, and that my proposal with Dan Nyhart on oil spills had received the top grade. "The final awards are not yet out," he said, "but I can tell you it is impossible for the top proposal not to receive some funding."
I finally heard about Doherty sometime later in March 1979, and under some interesting circumstances. I had arranged to go to Chicago for an interview with Northwestern University for a faculty position there, when I was told by my secretary that Ira Dyer had come into my office looking for my resume, and that he wanted to see me as soon as possible. I went into his office and he told me this: "You are commanded to be at the office of Walter Rosenblith (the Provost) at 11 am tomorrow. I am not allowed to tell you why, but I can nevertheless tell you that the Sea Grant committee has recently convened."
It became obvious that I had won the Doherty professorship. And indeed, in Rosenblith's office the next day it became official. Dyer was also there, and so was Dean Horn, the director of Sea Grant. The group was completed by Robert Seamans (Dean of Engineering), and Alfred Keil (former Sea Grant director). Calvin Campbell, the official MIT photographer was also there. Rosenblith handed me a letter confirming the award, effective July 1, 1979. The award was announced at the “MIT Tech Talk” about a week later.
And so started my academic career on July 1, 1979, with this Doherty professorship at MIT. Also, this is how the MIT Oil Spill project started, one of my most important projects at MIT, and one that produced two PhDs (Babis Ziogas and George Tharakan, both in 1982) and several papers in good journals and conferences.
In parallel to the MIT Oil Spill project, I also had two other projects when I started at MIT. A project on ocean acoustic detection, with support from the Office of Naval Research, and a project on dial-a-ride systems, with support from the US Department of Transportation.
See also HERE.
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