Ronald E. Mickens was a National Science Foundation (NSF) Postdoc at the Center for Theoretical Physics (1968-1970) and Visiting Professor (1973-1974) in the MIT Physics Department, hosted by Professor James Edward Young. Together they founded the National Society of Black Physicists. Dr. Mickens is Distinguished Fuller E. Callaway Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics at Clark Atlanta University.

Forty years after Dr. Mickens' time at MIT, his son, computer scientist James Mickens of Microsoft, was hosted by the MIT Electrical and Computer Science Department as a 2014-15 MLK Visiting Scholar.