David Goldston

David Goldston served as Director of the MIT Washington Office from May 2017 until retiring from the position in May 2025.  In that role, he directed MIT’s federal relations and helped faculty bring their insights to policymakers.  For the eight prior years, he was the Director of Government Affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a leading environmental group, where he helped shape NRDC’s federal political strategy, policies and communications.  He came to NRDC after spending more than 20 years on Capitol Hill, working primarily on science policy and environmental policy.  He was Chief of Staff of the U.S. House Committee on Science from 2001 through 2006.

Goldston has taught courses on science policy at Princeton, Harvard and the University of California, and for the past decade has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.  He is also currently serving in a consulting position as a Senior Advisor at the Association of American Universities (AAU), which represents the nation’s top research universities.

From 2007 through 2009, he wrote a monthly column for Nature on science policy titled “Party of One.”  Goldston also was the project director for the Bipartisan Policy Center report “Improving the Use of Science in Regulatory Policy” (2009). He authored a chapter in The Science of Science Policy: A Handbook (Stanford University Press, 2011).  He has served on several committees of the National Academy of Sciences and is currently a member of its advisory committee for its Climate Crossroads project. He holds a B.A. (1978) from Cornell University and completed the course work for a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Pennsylvania.