Susan Hockfield

Susan Hockfield has served as the sixteenth president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since December 2004. A strong advocate of the vital role that science, technology, and the research university play in the world, she believes that MIT can best advance its historic mission of teaching, research, and service by providing robust and sustained support for the ideas and energies of its faculty and students. A noted neuroscientist whose research has focused on the development of the brain, Dr. Hockfield is the first life scientist to lead MIT and holds a faculty appointment as professor of neuroscience in the Institute's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Dr. Hockfield encourages collaborative work among MIT's schools, departments, and interdisciplinary laboratories and centers to keep the Institute at the forefront of innovation. She believes that MIT's strengths in engineering and science uniquely position the Institute to pioneer newly evolvi