Susan Hockfield is Professor of Neuroscience and President Emerita at MIT. As the sixteenth president (2004-2012), she was the first woman and the first life scientist to lead the Institute. After earning degrees from the University of Rochester and Georgetown University School of Medicine, Hockfield was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at San Francisco before joining the scientific staff at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1985, Hockfield became a faculty member at Yale University, where she was the William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1998-2002), and Provost (2003-2004). Her research focused on brain development and glioma, pioneering the use of monoclonal antibody technology in brain research. Hockfield is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science; she recently served as president and chairman for the latter. She is a life member of the MIT Corporation and a board member of the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. She has served as a Science Envoy with the U.S. Department of State and a member of a Congressional Commission evaluating Department of Energy laboratories. Hockfield serves as a director of Cajal Neuroscience, Break Through Cancer, Fidelity Non-Profit Management Foundation, Lasker Foundation, Mass General Brigham Incorporated, Pfizer, Inc., Repertoire Immune Medicines, and Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.