Susan Hockfield was announced as MIT’s sixteenth president on August 26, 2004. She formally took office December 6, 2004, replacing Charles M. Vest, who held the position since 1990. Hockfield's official inauguration celebrations took place during the week of May 2, 2005. Her title is "President and Professor of Neuroscience," and she is the first woman to hold the title of president of MIT.

Susan Hockfield has remained an active research scientist while pursuing her career in university administration. Scientists working under her direction identified a family of cell surface proteins whose expression is regulated by neuronal activity early in an animal's life. Her early work involved the application of monoclonal antibody technology to questions within neurobiology. A link between her research and human health was made when it was suggested one of these proteins played a role in the progression of brain tumors. Hockfield's work has recently focused one type of brain tumor called glioma. Her work suggests that the glioma is particularly deadly because of the way highly mobile cancerous cells move around the brain.^*

Before leaving to head MIT, Hockfield served at Yale University as provost, the university's second highest officer. She had previously served at Yale as dean of the Graduate School and as a professor of neurobiology.

When dean of the Graduate School, Hockfield introduced a "Take a Faculty Member to Lunch" program to encourage informal faculty-student interactions. The program paid for lunch when one or two students invited a professor to join them. It was later expanded to include covering the costs of a lunch when a faculty member invited a graduate student. First as graduate school dean and then as provost, Hockfield was at the center of the imbroglio surrounding the Graduate Employees and Students Organization and its unionization effort. She was staunchly anti-union.

Hockfield received her undergraduate degree from the University of Rochester and her doctorate from the Georgetown University School of Medicine. Her doctoral dissertation was on the subject of pathways in the nervous system through which pain is perceived and processed. Her advisor during her doctoral work was Steven Gobel.

Personal

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Hockfield is married to Thomas N. Byrne, M.D. They have a daughter, Elizabeth.

Education

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• B.A., Biology, 1973, University of Rochester.
• Ph.D, Anatomy and Neuroscience, 1979, Georgetown University School of Medicine

Scientific contributions

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• Pioneered the use of monoclonal antibody technology in brain research
• Discovered a gene that plays a critical role in the spread of cancer in the brain

Honors

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• American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, Yale University Graduate School
• Meliora Citation for Career Achievement, University of Rochester
• Charles Judson Herrick Award (for outstanding contributions by a young scientist), American Association of Anatomists

External links

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• Susan Hockfield, President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Categories

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American educators | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Massachusetts Institute of Technology presidents | Georgetown University alumni