Kaitlin Goldstein dies in tragic accident.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: An MIT graduate student, who was spending the summer studying in India, has been found dead, after a routine morning jog tragically ended with her at the bottom of a steep ravine.
Kaitlin R. Goldstein was a fourth-year student of architecture at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), in the esteemed institution’s Building Technology Program. According to a press release put out by the school on Sunday, Goldstein (28) was spending the summer at the Students’ Education and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL).
At the time of her death, Goldstein was participating in a workshop that lasted from June 8-14, and was centered on “energy and development.” Her summer project was to help with the installation of solar panels around a nearby Buddhist monastery, as part of a program co-sponsored by the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values, and the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology.
A long-time competitive runner, she was known for taking early morning jogs around campus, and had set out to do just that at around 6 AM local time on the morning of June 14.
She did not return at her usual time, and at around 8:45 AM that day, her teachers and classmates began mounting a search effort for her around the summit of the mountain she frequently ran on. As Goldstein’s disappearance became prolonged, the search effort eventually attracted the help of the Intelligence Bureau of India, the American Embassy in New Delhi, the Bureau of Consular Affairs at the U.S. State Department, the FBI, and a private security firm from Mumbai that MIT retained.
This past Saturday, however, that search effort finally came to a tragic end, as local police found Goldstein’s body at the bottom of a steep chasm. Investigators have ruled out foul play, saying that it appears Goldstein slipped on a loose rock while running, causing her to fall several hundred feet off the side of the cliff.
Goldstein’s family has been in India to help with the investigation, and is now making arrangements for their daughter’s funeral and memorial services.
MIT President L. Rafael Reif sent out an email to the university’s community over the weekend, expressing his condolences and informing students and faculty that counseling services are available.
“As Kate’s family and friends bear this sorrow, we offer them the sympathy and support of the MIT community,” Reif wrote in his email. “The death of someone so young and promising is a terrible loss; we should all take time to reach out to those around us.”
Goldstein earned her B.S. in Engineering in 2008, from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She then went to the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned her M.S. in Architectural Engineering in 2009. She was a Bosch-MIT Energy Fellow, a member of the Society of Energy Fellows at MIT.
Her bio on the MIT website states that she was “broadly interested in energy flows in buildings and energy efficiency in the built environment” and that she was “most gratified by the process of bringing together people of diverse backgrounds and skill-sets fostering truly interdisciplinary and integrated design.”