NEWS BRIEFS
Official Cambridge City Council, School Committee results; recount to be held
The official results of the Cambridge Municipality Council and School Committee elections show no changes in the winners from the previous unofficial results, simply the order of the candidates elected. Four new city councillors: Dennis Benzan, Marc C. McGovern, Dennis J. Carlone, and Nadeem A. Mazen ’06 were elected, while two incumbents: Ken E. Reeves and Minka Y. vanBeuzekom were defeated. Two city council seats will be filled by MIT alumni: Mazen is also MIT’s head squash coach, and Leland Cheung MBA ’12 was reelected.
Cambridge will hold a recount for the election, as vanBeuzekom petitioned for another tally on Monday, having fell short of re-election by 13 votes, behind Carlone. (vanBeuzekom also finished 14 votes behind Mazen.) The recount must begin within 10 days of Wednesday, when the petition was certified by the Cambridge Board of Election Commissioners.
The School Committee maintained the elected members: Patricia M. Nolan, Alfred B. Fantini, Richard Harding Jr., Kathleen M. Kelly, Fran A. Cronin, and Mervan F. Osborne. The seventh member is the mayor, who is elected from and by the City Council members. The City Council sets policy for the Cambridge municipality while the School Committee determines overall School Department policy and budget, according to its website.
Marc Kastner nominated to head of DOE Office of Science
Marc A. Kastner, the Donner Professor of Science and dean of MIT’s School of Science, was recently nominated to lead the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science. President Barack Obama tapped Kastner to lead this DOE program, which is one of the largest supporters of basic research The DOE Office of Science is responsible for, among others things, 10 of the 17 DOE national laboratories, and managed a $4.9 billion budget in 2010. Kastner is a professor in the Department of Physics and researches condensed matter. He served as head of MIT’s Department of Physics before becoming the Dean of the School of Science in 2007.
—Tushar Kamath