Owen Coté PhD ’96, a principal analysis scientist with the MIT Safety Research Program (SSP), handed away on June 8 after battling most cancers. He joined SSP in 1997 as affiliate director, a task he held for the remainder of his life. He guided this system via the course of three administrators — every benefiting from his clever counsel, management expertise, and sense of accountability.
“Owen was an indomitable scholar and chief of the sector of safety research,” says M. Taylor Fravel, the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and the director of SSP. “Owen was the guts and soul of SSP and a one-of-a-kind scholar, colleague, and buddy. He will probably be vastly missed by us all.”
Having earned his doctorate in political science at MIT, Coté embodied this system’s skilled and scholarly values. By his analysis and his instructing, he nurtured three of this system’s core pursuits — the research of nuclear weapons and technique, the research of the connection between technological change and army follow, and the applying of group idea to understanding the habits of army establishments.
He was the creator of “The Third Battle: Innovation within the U.S. Navy’s Silent Chilly Battle Wrestle with Soviet Submarines,” a e book analyzing the sources of the U.S. Navy’s success in its Chilly Battle antisubmarine warfare effort, and a co-author of “Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy: Containing the Menace of Unfastened Russian Nuclear Weapons and Fissile Materials.” He additionally wrote on the way forward for naval doctrine, nuclear drive construction points, and the specter of weapons of mass destruction terrorism.
He was an influential nationwide knowledgeable on undersea warfare. In accordance with Ford Worldwide Professor of Political Science Barry Posen, Coté’s colleague for a number of a long time who served as SSP director from 2006 to 2019, “Owen is credited, amongst others, with serving to the U.S. Navy see the knowledge of reworking 4 ‘surplus’ Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines into cruise missile platforms that serve the Navy and the nation to today.”
Coté’s principal curiosity lately was maritime “conflict in three dimensions” — floor, air, and subsurface — and the way they interacted and adjusted with advancing know-how. He just lately accomplished a e book manuscript on this advanced historical past. On the time of his dying, he was additionally making ready a manuscript that analyzed the sources of modern army doctrine, utilizing instances that in contrast U.S. Navy responses to moments within the Chilly Battle when U.S. leaders anxious concerning the vulnerability of land-based missiles to Soviet assault.
“Nobody in our area was as educated about army organizations and operations, the politics that drives safety coverage, and related theories of worldwide relations as Owen,” based on Harvey Sapolsky, MIT Professor of Public Coverage and Group, Emeritus, and SSP director from 1989 to 2006. “And nobody was extra prepared to share that data to assist others of their work.”
This broad portfolio of experience served him effectively as co-editor and finally editor of the journal Worldwide Safety, the longtime flagship journal of the safety research subfield. His colleague and editor-in-chief of Worldwide Safety Steven Miller displays that, “Owen mixed an excellent analytic thoughts, a mischievous humorousness, and a ardour for his work. His contribution to Worldwide Safety was immense and will probably be missed, as I relied on his judgement with complete confidence.”
Coté believed in sharing his scholarly findings with the coverage neighborhood. With Cindy Williams, a principal analysis scientist at SSP, he helped manage and ran a collection of nationwide safety simulations for army officers and Division of Protection (DoD) civilians within the nationwide safety research program on the Elliott Faculty of Worldwide Affairs at George Washington College. He commonly produced main conferences at MIT, with a number of on the U.S. nuclear assault submarine drive maybe essentially the most influential.
He was keen about nurturing youthful students. In recent times, he led packages for visiting fellows at SSP: the Nuclear Safety Fellows Program and the Grand Technique, Safety, and Statecraft Fellows Program.
Caitlin Talmage PhD ’11, one among his former college students and now an affiliate professor of political science at MIT, describes Coté as “a loyal mentor and instructor. His lessons sparked many dissertations, and he engaged deeply with college students and their analysis, offering detailed suggestions, usually over steak dinners. Regardless of his towering experience within the area of safety research, Owen was at all times affected person, beneficiant, and respectful towards his college students. He continued to advise many even after commencement as they launched their careers, myself included. He will probably be profoundly missed.”
Phil Haun PhD ’10, additionally one among Coté’s college students and now professor and director of the Rosenberg Deterrence Institute on the Naval Battle Faculty, describes Coté as “a mentor, colleague, and buddy to a technology of MIT SSP graduate college students,” noting that “arguably his best achievement and legacy are the students he nurtured and beloved.”
As Haun notes, “Owen’s experience, with a close to encyclopedic data of improvements in army know-how, coupled with a gregarious persona and willingness to share his time and expertise, attracted dozens of scholars to affix in a journey to review necessary problems with worldwide safety. Owen’s ardour for his work and his eagerness to share a meal and a drink with these with related pursuits inspired these round him. The diploma to which so many MIT SSP alums have remained linked to this system is testomony to the caring neighborhood of students that Owen helped create.”
Posen describes Coté as a “larger-than-life determine and essentially the most brave and decided human being I’ve ever met. He may gentle up a room when he was amongst individuals he favored, and he favored most individuals. He was within the workplace suite almost day by day of the week, together with weekends, and his door was normally open. Professors, fellows, and graduate college students would drop by to hunt his counsel on points of each sort, and it was not unusual for an anticipated 10-minute interlude to show right into a one-hour seminar. He had a very distinctive capability to grasp the interplay of know-how and army operations. I’ve by no means met anybody who may match him on this capability. He additionally knew the way to actually take pleasure in life. It’s an unbelievable loss on many, many ranges.”
As Miller notes, “I bought to know Owen whereas serving as supervisor of his senior thesis at Harvard Faculty in 1981–82. That was the start of a lifelong friendship and fortunately our careers remained entangled for the rest of his life. I’ll miss the great, respectable human being, the expensive buddy, the nice and cozy and dedicated colleague. He was a courageous soul, struggling a lot, overcoming a lot, and contributing a lot. It’s deeply painful to lose such a buddy.”
“Owen was sort and beneficiant, and although he endured a lot, he by no means complained,” says Sapolsky. “He gave splendidly organized and insightful talks, improved the writing of others together with his enhancing, and at all times gave sound recommendation to those that have been clever sufficient to hunt it.”
After graduating from Harvard Faculty in 1982 and earlier than returning to graduate college, Coté labored on the Hudson Institute and the Middle for Naval Analyses. He acquired his PhD in 1996 from MIT, the place he specialised in U.S. protection coverage and worldwide safety affairs.
Earlier than becoming a member of SSP in 1997, he served as assistant director of the Worldwide Safety Program at Harvard’s Middle for Science and Worldwide Affairs (now the Belfer Middle).
He was the son of Ann F. Coté and the late Owen R. Coté Sr. His household wrote in his obituary that at dwelling, he was at all times up for a superb dialogue about Star Wars or Harry Potter films. Bike magazines have been a lifelong ardour. He was a loyal uncle to his nieces Eliza Coté, Sofia Coté, and Livia Coté, in addition to his self-proclaimed “faux” niece and nephew, Sam and Nina Harrison.
Along with his mom and his nieces, he’s survived by his siblings: Mark T. Coté of Blacksburg, Virginia; Peter H. Coté and his spouse Nina of Topsfield, Massachusetts; and Suzanne Coté Curtiss and her husband Robin of Cape Neddick, Maine.
