Dr. Judith E. Selwyn, MIT PhD ’71 (V) and her husband, Dr. Lee L. Selwyn, MIT PhD ’69 (XV), as Trustees of the Lee L. and Judith E. Selwyn Foundation, will have the conference, room adjacent to the new chemistry undergraduate labs in the MIT.nano building, named in their honor for their generous gift of $500,000. With another generous gift of $130,000, the Selwyns spearheaded a very successful mini-campaign to raise funds for replacement and renewal of instrumentation in the Department of Chemistry Instrumentation Facility.
Judy Selwyn is a nationally known expert in the conservation of historic building materials. As President of Preservation Technology Associates, LLC.. she has overseen the restoration of historic masonry and roofing for structures at Harvard, Yale, Wellesley College, Smith College, the U.S. Naval Academy and MIT. Her other projects include the Massachusetts State House, the Gardner Museum and Faneuil Hall. Dr. Selwyn has an unusual familiarity with the Department of Chemistry’s Building 18. During the renovation of this IM Pei building in 2000-2003, she was engaged for her expertise in the conservation of the historic concrete facades. In 2010, she received the Codman Award for Lifetime Achievement presented by the Boston Preservation Alliance. Dr. Selwyn serves on MIT’s Corporation Visiting Committee for the Chemistry Department and on the Board of MIT Hillel.
Lee Selwyn is the President of Economics and Technology, Inc, and is an internationally recognized authority on telecommunications and Internet economics, regulation, and public policy. Since founding ETI in 1972, Dr. Selwyn has developed numerous policy recommendations and regulatory devices that have been widely embraced by policymakers at all levels. He is an elected Town Meeting Member in Brookline, Mass. and serves on the Town’s Finance and Audit Committees.
In a letter to Department Head Sylvia Ceyer on June 24, 2014, Judy Selwyn wrote: “Lee and I have been extremely impressed with the broad range of research underway in the various School of Science departments, and believe that improved undergraduate facilities that this fund supports will help to encourage more MIT students to pursue the pure sciences.”