When I was there, Terri Grodzicker ran all the courses pretty much, but with a real focus on the molecular biology courses. And Birgit Zipser helped out some with the neurobiology courses. And, I gathered, Jim decided that it would be good if I ran the summer neurobiology series. Now think about this: I was like four minutes out of graduate school. I just got my PhD the year before last. I'd just gotten there as a staff member. I mean, what is this about? And I have to tell you, I asked him once, I said, "Jim, I'm delighted to have this assignment, but why me?" And he said something very odd. He said, "Well, when the phone rings, you pick it up." What he meant was that what he had seen about me when there was a job to do, I did it. That's what happens when you grow up in a family of four girls, someone sort the socks, you sort the socks, okay, I'll sort... I'll pick up the phone, I'll organize those courses.

And maybe I'm guessing I'm being a little bit deprecating, self-deprecating, but I think it was partly my breadth of curiosity, my eagerness to engage with people. All of these things are needed when you are responsible for a course series for finding people from all over the world who are the leaders and persuading to be part of it ends up that is not so hard. You want to do a course in single channel electrophysiology. Everyone was happy to come to Cold Spring Harbor and teach a course on it. It's so fun. I mean, it's science camp for grownups I used to call it. Oh, just a blast. Just so much fun. And it's a way of gaining information and building a community. So, the courses are so important. It was weird that I thought that he should ask me, but in retrospect, two things. First of all, he recognized things about me that I didn't know about myself. And the second is that I'm often asked how I became president of MIT, where did that strand of organization come from? And in retrospect, it came from Jim asking me to run the summer course program in neuroscience at Cold Spring Harbor.

I mean, there are many things that I encountered for the first time in that role that have served me well for lo these many years.

Susan Hockfield is a neuroscientist whose research focuses on brain development and glioma, pioneering the use of monoclonal antibody technology demonstrating that early experience results in lasting changes in the molecular structure of the brain. She is a Professor of Neuroscience and President Emerita at MIT. She was the first woman and life scientist to serve as MIT’s sixteenth president from 2004-2012.

Hockfield earned her B.A. in biology from the University of Rochester (1973) and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University at the School of Medicine (1979). In 1980, Hockfield completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California at San Francisco. She then joined the scientific staff at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York where she ran her own lab for five years. She also served as director of the Summer Neurobiology Program from 1985 to 1997. In 1985, Hockfield became the William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology at Yale University. She went on to serve as the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1998-2002, and Provost from 2003-2004.

In December 2004, Hockfield assumed office as the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She held this role until June 2012 and continues to hold a faculty appointment as professor of neuroscience and as a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

Hockfield has received numerous awards including 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 Amelia Earhart Award from the Women’s Union, and the Yale Science and Engineering Association 2021 Award for Distinguished Service to Industry, Commerce or Education.

She also holds honorary degrees from Brown University, Duke University, Georgetown University, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, New York University, Northeastern University, Tsinghua University (Beijing), Université Pierre et Marie Curie, University of Edinburgh, University of Massachusetts Medical School, University of Rochester, and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory School of Biological Sciences.