So, one of the puzzles about myself that I don't quite understand is I am a shy person. And yet somehow when the magic hits, and the magic is curiosity, it's not entirely random. It works out most of the time. And it may be that in retrospect, I remember it working out. I don't remember it not working out. But it is for me, one of the greatest joys in human experience is to explore some topic with someone and feel that kind of mounting acceleration and interest as the ideas swirl.

I love convening and amplifying ideas. It's what science is about. Science is about discovering this little thing over here and this little thing over here and saying, wait a minute, those things are related and if you put them together, two and two is eight. And it's that kind of, I mean, I always enjoyed doing puzzles. I mean, I like understanding how things work and figuring out how to make them work better. It's been in my blood since I was three years old. It's just what's fun. It's exciting to create, to see opportunity and be able to seize it. And these great universities are just cauldrons of possibility. People come with their eyes, raised in their arms out and basically, I mean, in the best of times, this is not always like this, saying feed me. I mean, they're open to ideas, they're open to relationships, they're open to – in the best of times. And I have to say, in the current time, where we're in a quandary about what the role of a university is, and in my mind, the role of a university is to create possibility, not to constrain possibility, to create opportunity, to create discovery, and its discovery about things outside of yourself and discover things inside yourself. And that is, there are a few things that could be more exciting than being part of that idea and life generation.

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.