Bruno Verdini’s research and teaching focuses on cognitive insights, emotional skills, and management strategies in the areas of:

• Negotiation, Mediation, and Conflict Resolution
• Adaptive Leadership
• Collaborative Decision-Making
• Political Communication

Dr. Verdini received MIT’s first ever interdisciplinary and interdepartmental Ph.D. in Negotiation, Communication, Diplomacy, and Leadership. His work, which explores how to improve the practice of transboundary water, energy, and environmental negotiations, won Harvard Law School’s Award for the best research of the year in negotiation, competitive decision-making, mediation, and dispute resolution.

Selected from dozens of studies and publications across diverse fields, including business, economics, education, government, law, neuroscience, psychology, and public policy, the annual award is named in memory of Howard Raiffa, founding father of the negotiation and decision science fields as research disciplines. This is the first time in the decades-long history of the award that it has been given to someone from MIT, as well as the first time it has been awarded to someone born and raised in Latin America.

Bruno teaches MIT’s popular undergraduate course, The Art and Science of Negotiation, for which him and his outstanding students have been featured on MIT’s Homepage Spotlight and as the lead story in MIT News. He created an entirely new syllabus from scratch, as he prepared to teach the course for the first time. With his new pedagogy in place, enrollment numbers increased 800%, from 50 to 400 students per year. The course elective attracts over 200 STEM undergraduates per semester, from more than 22 different MIT departments.