Susan Hockfield was announced as MIT’s sixteenth president on August 26, 2004. She formally took office December 6, 2004.
Susan Hockfield has remained an active research scientist while pursuing her career in university administration. Scientists working under her direction identified a family of cell surface proteins whose expression is regulated by neuronal activity early in an animal's life. Her early work involved the application of monoclonal antibody technology to questions within neurobiology.
A link between her research and human health was made when it was suggested one of these proteins played a role in the progression of brain tumors. Hockfield's work has recently focused one type of brain tumor called glioma. This paper suggests that this particular type of brain tumour is particularly deadly because of the way highly mobile cancerous cells move around the brain.
Before leaving to head MIT, Hockfield served at Yale as provost, the university's second highest officer. She had previously served at Yale as dean of the Graduate School and as a professor of neurobiology.
When dean of the Graduate School, Hockfield introduced a "Take a Faculty Member to Lunch" program to encourage informal faculty-student interactions. The program paid for lunch when one or two students invited a professor to join them. It was later expanded to include covering the costs of a lunch when a faculty member invited a graduate student.
Also while at Yale, Hockfield opposed graduate student unionization, and had many altercations with student representatives. She is quoted as remarking during one incident that, "I am shocked - shocked - that the unions would prioritize getting jiggy with it over the safety of our student body. But, have a safe night and rest up for the morning." Generally, however, she adopted a policy of silence on the issue.
Hockfield received her undergraduate degree from the University of Rochester and a graduate degree from the Georgetown University School of Medicine .
Her doctorate is in anatomy on the subject of pathways in the nervous system through which pain is perceived and processed. Her adviser during her doctoral work there was Steven Gobel .
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