I'll tell you something that happened to Cold Spring Harbor that has just never left me. That first symposium on molecular neurobiology, again wasn't four minutes, I was eight minutes out of graduate school when I had a, of course a platform presentation.

It was Cold Spring Harbor and as I think about my early talks, probably most of my talks all along the way, ways I could have done it better, no one ever said anything to me except once. And it was wonderful. I was in the line for lunch at whatever, in the dining hall, after we had been in Grace Auditorium. We go up to the dining hall and the man in the line in front of me turned around to me, he said, "I really enjoyed your talk, but the transitions weren't good. The transition from one idea to the next." And he said, "I always, always focus on the transitions because it's awkward and it's hard for the audience and it's hard for the speaker. So just FYI, if you worked on your transitions, your work, your talk would be better." The only time in my life that someone actually gave me helpful advice. So, I think we can all do that more and not be worried about hurting people's feelings, but give it honestly without an edge, without it being an attempt to downgrade someone to be smarter than they are, but just simply say, I had that problem and this is how I fixed it. I mean, I never thought about transitions, never occurred to me to think about the transitions in a talk. So wonderful.

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.