Susan Hockfield

Susan Hockfield has served as the 16th President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since December 2004. With a faculty appointment in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, she is the first life scientist to lead MIT, where she has helped the Institute capitalize on the historic convergence of the life sciences with the engineering and physical sciences in fields from clean energy to cancer. In response to her leadership, in 2006 MIT launched the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), a $355 million effort to accelerate research, policy and education to achieve a clean energy future. Dr. Hockfield also advocates for the research university as an engine of innovation and economic growth, and is working to shape emerging national policy on next-generation manufacturing. In June 2011, President Obama asked her to co-chair the steering committee of the new Advanced Manufacturing Partnership.

A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Hockfield holds honorary degrees from many institutions, including Brown University, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, Tsinghua University (Beijing), the University of Edinburgh, the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, and the Watson School of Biological Sciences at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. She also serves as a director of the General Electric Company and the World Economic Forum Foundation; a member of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and WGBH; and an overseer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Before assuming the presidency of MIT, she was Provost at Yale University, where she had also served as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and held the William Edward Gilbert Professorship in Neurobiology. After completing a BA from the University of Rochester, a PhD from Georgetown University and postdoctoral work at the University of California at San Francisco, Dr. Hockfield joined the scientific staff of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.