MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics alum gifts $2.5 million

MIT alum Jeff Silver, along with his wife Marianne and two of their sons, visited the Massachusetts of Institute of Technology to gift the Center for Transportation & Logistics with $2.5 million to help fund the Center’s ongoing efforts in supply chain research and education.

MIT alum Jeff Silver, along with his wife Marianne and two of their sons, visited the Massachusetts of Institute of Technology (MIT) to gift the Center for Transportation & Logistics (CTL) with $2.5 million to help fund the Center’s ongoing efforts in supply chain research and education.

The gift will be divided into two funds:
• The Silver Family Student Support Fund will provide fellowships for in-need supply chain graduate students.
• The Silver Family Research Fellowship Fund will endow a chair for CTL Executive Director, Dr. Chris Caplice, who has been named as the Silver Family Research Fellow.

Silver is a 2003 graduate of the MIT Supply Chain Management Master’s Program. After several years in the trucking industry, he took a five-year hiatus to return to school, first earning his MBA from the University of Michigan and then his Master of Engineering in Logistics degree from MIT.

“My time at MIT allowed me some distance from the commercial world. I was able to think strategically about the supply chain and logistics space,” Silver said to CTL faculty, researchers and staff in a special ceremony to announce the gift. In 2006, Jeff and Marianne co-founded Coyote Logistics, which has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing freight-brokerages in the third-party logistics industry. In July of 2015, under Silver’s leadership, Coyote became a UPS subsidiary.

MIT President L. Rafael Reif also spoke at the event. “At MIT, we know how great the Center for Transportation & Logistics is, but our appreciation is taken to another level entirely when an alum recognizes the Center’s value in such a generous way.”

Yossi Sheffi, Director of CTL, underlined the value of the gift to CTL and the supply chain field. “This gift will allow CTL to continue its growth and enhance its offerings in the years to come. Supply Chain is a rapidly growing space and an increasingly important function for global companies.”