This was I think January of 1975 when I started my graduate program. I graduated in essentially the middle of the year, but I got my degree at the end of 1973 from Rochester. Went to Washington, did some technical work, technician work at Rochester, then another year of technician work in Washington, at George Washington, and then went to graduate school. Started graduate school, again, off-cycle. And I worked for the summer in the lab and we started a project that was very exciting. And I'm not sure how we hatched the idea, whether it was me or Stephen Gobel, my advisor, just, what a hero. I admire him enormously for any number of things. I don't know who suggested that maybe I could do my dissertation there. Very unusual. So, I brought it back to my department and said, well, I really had a great summer, I want to continue the work, and this is what I'd like my dissertation to be.

And they said, of course, no. I said, well, why not? And we worked it out. Steve Gobel had to have an appointment at Georgetown, so we figured out how to get him an appointment at Georgetown so he could be my advisor, my supervisor . And again, one of the greatest gifts anyone could receive to get the freedom to be a scientist and get your dissertation while you're being a scientist and not have to climb up some false set of stairs to achieve being a scientist. But I, of course, had a lot of experience as a technician, so I had technical skills. I knew a lot about doing science, and that was fantastic. So, I basically, after I finished my coursework at Georgetown, did teaching, which I loved, loved the teaching requirements of my graduate program. I just basically went to NIH. I moved my apartment from close to Georgetown to close to NIH, and was just caught up in this wonderfully exciting, vast, global epic of pain research from the very beginning of understanding how we process pain to how we alleviate pain. For me, it was just not just eye-opening, but the sense of a community of people bringing different perspectives, different technologies together, and evolving their understanding of the problem and the solutions in this multidisciplinary environment. It was fantastic, and I would say very much formed who I am intellectually and who I am as a university leader.

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.