At MIT, as the associate head of physics for the past five years, Mavalvala looked after the department’s academic program, implemented new and flexible doctoral classes.
She collaborated with the department head Peter Fisher to co-found the Physics Values Committee – a group of faculty, staff, and students who advise the department on issues of well-being, respect, inclusion, collaboration, and mentorship. She has taken up initiatives to meet the department’s goals related to education while also aiming to reduce stress and workload on students, staff, and faculty.
She is a great professor who prioritizes her students and listens to them and their grievances.
Born to a Parsi family in Lahore, she moved to US in 1986 and enrolled at Wellesley College, to pursue physics and astronomy and graduated in 1990. Mavalvala and her physics professor at college, Robert Berg, co-authored a paper in Physical Review B: Condensed Matter. She went on to pursue PhD in physics from MIT in 1997.
Berg describes “Nergis as a freshman who was fearless with a refreshing can-do attitude.” She even helped Berg, who was a new faculty back then, transform an empty room into a lab.