Susan Hockfield Challenges Students, Universities to “Invent the Future” by Blending Biology and Engineering

Susan Hockfield, former president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Belfer Center Board of Directors, delivered the 2014 Edwin L. Godkin Lecture in March on the role universities can play in shaping the future.

In her lecture at Harvard Kennedy School’s JFK Jr. Forum, “The 21st Century’s Technology Story: The Convergence of Biology with Engineering and the Physical Sciences,” Hockfield discussed how convergence of these disciplines can revolutionize technology and the 21st century. For that revolution to be successful, she said, we need a national movement that supports innovation and the advancement of American technology.

To illustrate the possibilities created by blending the life sciences, physical sciences, and engineering, Hockfield gave examples of MIT research involving convergence. One example was the use of nanoparticles that can diagnose a specific disease or attack cancer cells when injected into a patient. Another was the use of a virus to synthesize a lithium-ion battery that will enable electric cars to travel greater distances.

Students are “wildly enthusiastic” about using convergence to solve great problems, Hockfield said. The question for universities and for the nation is, “Can we expand from a one-by-one approach to a full-throttle attack on these problems?”

“The possibilities of the convergence,” she said, “are truly beyond our imaginations.”

Hockfield was introduced by Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust who called her a “lifelong experimenter” and a leader “who continues to inspire me and so many others in her deep commitment to the highest ideals of higher education.”