by Scottie Barsotti
After years of study and research in materials science and geology, Darius Dixon’s curiosity, investigative spirit, and love of language urged him toward a career in the fast-paced world of journalism.
Many people who pursue engineering are driven by an unquenchable curiosity about how things work and a desire to solve problems in the world—but to do that, you have to be able to ask the right questions. For Darius Dixon (MSE 2004), “asking the right questions” took an untraditional form for an engineer, leading him on a path away from the incremental progress of research and into a career that not only seeks, but demands, answers: journalism.
“I grew up in Brooklyn. When you grow up in New York City, current events are always happening all around you,” said Dixon, a materials science and engineering graduate who is now deputy managing editor, policy at POLITICO. “I always paid attention to what was going on, but I never thought of journalism as a profession.”
As a self-described “typical science nerd,” Dixon recalls his days as a high school student who excelled in physics, even though there were no scientists or engineers in his family. His fascination with complex systems would find him opening The New York Times just to pore over the currency table as a proxy for world economies.
