Schmidt-MacArthur Fellowship Welcomes MIT and Tongji University as Partner Universities

LONDON, November 27, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from the US and Tongji University of China, join as partners to the Schmidt-MacArthur Fellowship programme.

The Fellowship programme, a joint initiative between the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in the UK and the Schmidt Family Foundation in the United States, aims to create an innovation platform for postgraduate students and academics from top design, engineering and business schools globally to redesign the economy.

MIT and Tongji Universities will join an exclusive network of twelve partner universities, including Yale University, Stanford University, the University of California Berkeley, the National Institute of Design, India and Imperial College London, working towards accelerating the transition to a circular economy.

"Today's MIT graduate student is increasingly interested in issues and opportunities at the intersection of service and innovation. The Schmidt-MacArthur Fellowship will provide students with valuable experience designed to cultivate and enrich their ideas in the responsible context of the circular economy. In turn, this fellowship furthers MIT's long-standing mission of utilizing technology and science to solve the world's great challenges for the betterment of mankind." says Christine Ortiz, Dean for Graduate Education and Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Professor Zhu Dajian, Director of Institute of Sustainability and Governance at Tongji University stated: "The vision of Tongji University is to become a world class university of sustainability orientation and the vision of the School of Economics & Management (SEM) is to be globally recognised for developing leading management professionals capable of building a sustainable society. Tongji and SEM are pleased to be a Partner University in the Fellowship programme and to contribute to the teaching, research and outsourcing of the circular economy."

"MIT and Tongji University will join a powerful interdisciplinary group of educational institutions focused on design, engineering & business as the disciplines best placed to unlock the benefits of the circular economy. Their participation further builds the global reach of the Schmidt-MacArthur Fellowship, the only programme of its kind to bring together both academics and students at this level."

Says Dame Ellen MacArthur, Founder of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

At the launch of the Fellowship programme in London 2013 Wendy Schmidt, President of the Schmidt Family Foundation stated: "The Schmidt-MacArthur fellows, embedded with their mentors in our Partner Universities in the UK, Europe, the US, and India represent the first wave of what we intend will be a systematic movement of young people, thinkers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and future business leaders who will go into our higher educational institutions and come out from there into the industries and institutions that shape our world."

For more information go to: http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/education/schmidt