A noted neuroscientist, Susan Hockfield, Ph.D., was the first life scientist and the first woman to serve as President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from 2004 to 2012. Previously, she held the positions of Provost and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences while she was the William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology at Yale University. She has received honorary degrees from universities around the world. She is past chairman of AAAS and currently serves as a director of the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Partners HealthCare System and Fidelity Non-Profit Management Foundation, and the Council on Foreign Relations, is a life member of the MIT Corporation, and a board member of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.