Susan Hockfield

Susan Hockfield has distinguished herself both as a scientist and as the leader of one of the premier institutions of science and engineering in the world.

After earning a B.A. in biology from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University at the School of Medicine, Dr. Hockfield was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at San Francisco. She then joined the scientific staff at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

Joining the faculty of Yale University in 1985, Dr. Hockfield focused her research on the development of the brain and on glioma, a deadly form of brain cancer. She pioneered the use of monoclonal antibody technology in brain research, leading to her discovery of a protein that regulates changes in neuronal structure in response to experience in early life. She identified a gene and its family of protein products that play a critical role in the spread of cancer in the brain and may represent new therapeutic targets for glioma. She gained tenure in 1994, and was later named the William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology.

At Yale, Dr. Hockfield emerged as a strong, innovative university leader, first as dean of its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, with oversight of over 70 graduate programs, and then as provost, Yale's chief academic and administrative officer.

Since December 2004, Dr. Hockfield has served as the sixteenth president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she also holds a faculty appointment as professor of neuroscience in the Institute's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. As the first life scientist to head MIT, Dr. Hockfield has helped the Institute capitalize on its exceptional strength in both science and engineering to produce groundbreaking interdisciplinary research in fields from cancer to autism to AIDS. To support research and education that crosses disciplinary boundaries, MIT is currently constructing the 180,000 square-foot Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

In her inaugural remarks, Dr. Hockfield also made clear that MIT had a unique opportunity and an obligation to make a difference on the global problem of sustainable energy. In response to her leadership, in 2006 the Institute launched the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), currently a $254 million research and education effort that unites researchers from all five Schools at MIT with dozens of industry partners. Long an advocate for the research university as an engine of innovation and economic growth, Dr. Hockfield has worked very effectively to help shape the nation's emerging energy technology policy and research goals. In March 2009, she was the only university president invited to appear with President Obama at a White House press briefing on the economic potential of clean energy technologies.

Dr. Hockfield is also the first woman to lead MIT, a development welcome at an Institute where nearly half the undergraduates are women. A signature of her presidency has been her vocal commitment to making MIT a leader in building diversity all along the pipeline of talent. In November 2008, she convened MIT's first-ever Diversity Leadership Congress, a gathering of 300 leaders from across the Institute committed to cultivating a culture of inclusion that allows everyone to contribute at the peak of their ability.

Dr. Hockfield holds honorary degrees from Brown University, Tsinghua University (Beijing), the Watson School of Biological Sciences at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. Her accomplishments have also been recognized by the Charles Judson Herrick Award from the American Association of Anatomists, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Award from the Yale University Graduate School, the Meliora Citation from the University of Rochester, the Golden Plate Award from the Academy of Achievement, and the Amelia Earhart Award from the Women's Union.

An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she also serves as a director of the General Electric Company, a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and a member of the Board of Overseers of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Dr. Hockfield lives in Cambridge with her husband, Thomas  N. Byrne, M.D., and their daughter, Elizabeth.