New Appointments to IAS Board of Trustees
The Institute for Advanced Study—a leading, independent center for theoretical research and discovery located in Princeton, NJ—has appointed astrophysicist Victoria “Vicky” Kaspi, attorney Kevin L. MacMillan, and economist and finance executive Peter Orszag to its Board of Trustees. MacMillan’s appointment was unanimously adopted by the Board on October 25, 2025, while Kaspi and Orszag were appointed with universal approval on May 2, 2026.
The new appointees bring with them a wealth of experience and a strong commitment to the academic community. They will contribute expertise stemming from the worlds of law, academia, science, finance, and public policy to IAS, and their participation will be of great value to advancing the Institute’s mission of nourishing foundational discovery.
Victoria “Vicky” Kaspi has served as the Lorne Trottier Professor of Astrophysics since 2006 and is the Director of the Trottier Space Institute at McGill University, where she also holds the Distinguished James McGill Chair. An internationally recognized leader in observational astrophysics, her research utilizes radio and X-ray telescopes to study pulsars and magnetars. Prior to joining McGill in 1999, Kaspi served on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and held a NASA Hubble postdoctoral fellowship. She earned her bachelor’s degree in physics from McGill University and her Ph.D. in astrophysics from Princeton University. Her numerous honors include the Shaw Prize (2021), the Albert Einstein World Award of Science (2022), and being the first woman to receive the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering (2016). She is a Companion of the Order of Canada, Fellow of the Royal Society, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Kaspi has shared her groundbreaking research with the Institute’s scholarly community on numerous occasions, presenting at the Institute’s Astrophysics Seminar in 2008 and 2013, at the “General Relativity at 100” conference in 2015, and at the IAS/Princeton University Joint Astrophysics Colloquium in 2017.
Kevin L. MacMillan is a Partner at Allegaert Berger & Vogel, a firm he joined in 2003. His legal practice spans everything from contract negotiation and mergers and acquisitions to private intellectual property, and legal issues involving not-for-profit organizations. He began his legal career as an associate in the Capital Markets Group at Shearman & Sterling’s London office. MacMillan earned a bachelor’s degree in ecology and evolutionary biology from Princeton University and a J.D. from Columbia University. He is an active philanthropist, currently serving as chair of the Princeton Mpala Advisory Council, an advisory trustee at the Peddie School, and a member of the board of visitors for the Division of General, Thoracic, and Fetal Surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. MacMillan’s appointment continues a deep family legacy at the Institute. His mother, Trustee Emerita Nancy MacMillan, is the great-niece of founding IAS Trustee Herbert H. Maass, who shaped IAS from its earliest days by introducing its founders, sibling philanthropists Louis Bamberger and Caroline Bamberger Fuld, to Abraham Flexner, who would become the Institute's first Director.
Peter Orszag is the CEO and Chairman of the global financial firm Lazard, leading the firm through a period of strategic expansion and growth. He has built a distinguished career spanning finance, public policy and government service, and academia. Under President Barack Obama, he served as Director of the Office of Management and Budget, overseeing the federal budget during the financial crisis and contributing to the development of healthcare reform. Earlier, as Director of the Congressional Budget Office, he focused on long-term fiscal sustainability and the rising costs of healthcare. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and serves on the board of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Orszag also has established roots at IAS: his father, renowned mathematician and physicist Steven A. Orszag, who pioneered computational fluid dynamics and turbulence theory, served as a Member in the School of Natural Sciences from 1966–67, at the invitation of then-Director J. Robert Oppenheimer.
The appointments of MacMillan, Kaspi, and Orszag reinforce the Institute’s dedication to fostering a Board of Trustees with unparalleled expertise, ensuring its continuing legacy as a global center for independent, curiosity-driven research.
About the Institute
The Institute for Advanced Study has served as one of the leading independent centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry since its establishment in 1930, advancing the frontiers of knowledge across the sciences and humanities. From founding IAS Faculty Albert Einstein, Erwin Panofsky, and John von Neumann to influential figures Emmy Noether, George Kennan, and J. Robert Oppenheimer to the foremost thinkers of the present, IAS is dedicated to enabling independent inquiry and fundamental discovery.
Each year, the Institute welcomes more than 250 of the world’s most promising post-doctoral researchers and scholars who are selected and mentored by a permanent Faculty, all of whom are preeminent leaders in their fields. Among present and past Faculty and Members, there have been 37 Nobel Laureates, 46 of the 64 Fields Medalists, and 25 of the 29 Abel Prize Laureates, as well as winners of the Turing Award; the Pulitzer Prize in History; the Wolf, Holberg, and Kluge prizes; and many MacArthur and Guggenheim fellows, among other honors.
