Retsef Levi

Retsef Levi (; born March 7, 1971) is an Israeli applied mathematician and management scientist. He is the J. Spencer Standish Professor of Operations Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In June 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, appointed Levi as a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Early life and education Levi was born on March 7, 1971, in Tel Aviv, Israel. He is a brother of Israeli screenwriter Reshef Levi and Israeli author Yannets Levi.

From 1990 to 2001, Levi served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Beginning in 1991, he was an intelligence officer of the elite Israeli Intelligence Corps, first as a lieutenant intelligence analyst (1990–1992), then as a captain (1992–1994) and then major, or Rav séren (1994–1996). in 2005 under professors Robin Roundy and David Shmoys. His dissertation was entitled "Computing Provably Near-Optimal Policies for Stochastic Inventory Control Models". Professors James Renegar and Shane Henderson also advised Levi's thesis. After receiving his doctorate, Levi completed postdoctoral research at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, where he was the Goldstine Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Mathematical Sciences. He became an assistant professor of management in 2006 at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he held a position as a Robert N. Noyce Career Development Professor. He was promoted to an associate professor with tenure in July 2009 and received the school's appointment as its J. Spencer Standish Professor of Operations Management in July 2010. He has published papers on the mortality rates of COVID-19 vaccines. He wrote on Twitter in 2023 that “the evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death, especially among young people". On June 11, 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced that he appointed Levi as one of the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Levi was removed from his position on the ACIP in 2026 when a ruling in American Academy of Pediatrics v. Kennedy invalidated the entire committee's appointments.

Selected publications

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