YouSaid · the spoken record

Susan Hockfield

lines on the record: 83
first: 2019-05-31
most recent: 2019-05-31
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So it's interesting. So, this was my insight. I have to tell you my background is in neuroanat I am fascinated by structure and how structure gives rise to function. So it was a bit of a stretch when I became a molecular neurobiologist to understand what a gene was, to understand what a protein was. I mean, these things just didn't many, yeah, I didn't know what they were. And for me, the breakthrough, understanding about proteins is they're little machines. They're machines that can move and do jobs for us. They're built from biology. So a channel is a pore in a cell It's a protein, but the protein is a string of amino acids that winds itself up into a structure that carries out a job.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me ask you a question. Why do you call it a machine? I agree with you, but explain why you called it a machine versus people think of these as biological processes or biology is never thought of as a machine.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These are energy intensive, they're slow, they're expensive. Can we not do better? So one of the ideas that I talk about in the book is using nature's genius to filter water. And it ends up that all of our cells Have a protein in their membrane, in the cell membrane. That is the conduit for water to pass into and out of the cell. And it's a little biological machine that only allows water to pass. It's a great filter of water.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Worse and worse problem because our freshwater becomes contaminated. There is less and less available for more and more people.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rather than the principles of physics, but at the end of the day, the biology is based on principles of physics. But why can't we fast forward Let me give you an example from the book One of the great challenges for humankind going back thousands of years is clean water”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People think, I don't know, data. So I can hold up my cell phone and say, this is a machine built with physics. I could hold up an abalone shell. And say, this is a machine built with biology. And what an abalone does is gather up components of stuff in the seawater and creates an incredibly strong, yet light and sufficiently flexible shell. Why can't we build things that way when the abalone dies, the shell falls apart into pieces and provides the resources for the next generation of abalone”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It should be a book. What do you mean by living machines? Define that for lay people who have some idea. I mean, people have ideas in their heads about robots who are sentient and from sci-fi or Star Trek or wherever they're watching their things. And then, of course, you have the visions of robots that are all over. There's all kinds of robot stuff going on. But what does living machines mean? So, this is”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the idea of the age of living machines kind of emerged, and I didn't really take concrete form in my mind until I spent a spatial year. And at the close of that spectacle, I was at the Belfor Center at the Kennedy School. At Harvard, I was invited to give the Godkin lecture. And I use this idea of the convergence of biology with engineering as the theme of that lecture and realized with some encouragement from some close colleagues that it should be a book. And it should be a book.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when I moved to MIT from Yale, I decided not to move my lab, realizing that I would not have enough time in the day to be president, never mind time to be president and run a lab. So I left my research. I decided it was time to close the lab, which I did. Came to MIT, and this theme of the convergence of biology with engineering had started when I was at EL. We invented a new department of biomedical engineering that was a hybrid between the medical school and the FAS campus. I felt really good about that until I arrived at MIT and realized the scale of the enterprise. Tenfold different, and there was more going on here than I had ever imagined.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fundraising, actually, you can talk about fundraising because I found that to be incredibly exciting And interesting to meet people who were capable of giving us enormous gifts, but they were capable of doing that because they had had fantastic ideas that had changed the world.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So during my academic leadership at Yale, I had kept my lab, but had spent less and less attention at it. My mind had migrated from problems in the lab to problems in the university.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here with Susan Huckfield. She has a new book out called The Age of Living Machines, How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution. Susan, talk a little bit about how you decided to do this. I mean, you had been running institutions like Yale and MIT for years. You had abandoned what you were studying, or what did you want to do when you got out, like the idea of studying or a neuroscientist?”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the physical sciences. The Koch Institute is one example, the Raygon Institute, a similar kind of mashup of clinicians, biologists, and engineers to develop a vaccine against HIV AIDS. And other things We started a new center called the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. Similarly, can we figure out ways to bring biologists, clinicians, and engineers together around some of the really big problems?”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, to be thinking of them. And we're going to talk a little bit about this because this leads right into your book, The Age of Living Machines, that you discuss the virus battery. Do you call it the virus battery? I don't know what you call it, whatever”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Basically, conversations between the engineers and biologists so they could understand one another's worlds, develop a kind of vocabulary that would allow them to approach problems in a different way.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can you engineers find solutions? So the 12 engineers were handpicked. Engineers will work on any problem with their technology. And so most of the engineers who joined the biologists. Work on cancer and other things. One of my favorite examples is Angela Belcher, who works on building batteries, using viruses to build batteries. But also using viruses to build cancer detection systems. So a set of 12 engineers, but understanding that foundationally People who were raised in a discipline have a certain vocabulary. They have a certain perspective on what a problem is. They have a certain perspective on what it is. And it's different. So we started out with.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I found that very intriguing because it resonated with this thing I had been hearing. And I said, well, you know, we could do that. And that was kind of the founding conversation for what has become the Co-Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. The thesis is take the 12 cancer biologists that were in the Center for Cancer Research, pair them with 12 engineers. Him in the same building, get this conversation going, and see whether we can accelerate progress to finding new ways to diagnose, treat, prevent cancer, to accelerate progress on cancer, which has been, I mean, we've been making progress, but can we make progress faster? It has proved to be successful beyond anything I could have imagined. So, to have this conversation.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Will win the Nobel Prize before time is out on that. And the current director, then current director of the Center for Cancer Research, Tyler Jacks, came to talk to me as everyone did who had promises from the previous administration. And said that the Center for Cancer Research had been targeted to have either a renovation or new building. And would I be committed to that also? And I said, well, tell me what's going on. And he described a turn in the Center for Cancer Research to Cancer Nanotechnology. Basically, application of engineering concepts. The study of cancer.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he said, uh-uh, you don't get it way beyond biomedicine. And so that door began to open for me to understand what was going on. Engineers building technologies out of biological rather than physical parts. That became the second major theme of the presidency in the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research is one example. So the Center for Cancer Research was started in 1974 here at MIT, Salvador Lauria, who had already won a Nobel Prize, was the founder of that. He recruited 12 faculty in the Department of Biology. Be the founding members, and they did spectacular work. Four of those original 12 have the Nobel Prize at this point. My guess is that others of those 12.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that was another example of this kind of idea of bringing together different disciplines to attack a problem So the other theme, so the primary theme I heard was climate and energy. And the second theme was the opportunities around the convergence of biology with engineering When I first came to MIT, I was talking to everyone I possibly could to understand what was going on and again, what the opportunities, responsibilities were. The Dean of Engineering at the time, Tom Magnanti, told me that of the almost 400 faculty in the School of Engineering, a third of them were using biological parts in their work. And as a sometimes know-it-all, I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, biomedicine.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, economics and the business school and mechanical engineering and chemistry. I mean, really, everywhere I look, there was someone or many people with an interest in designing a sustainable energy future. So we launched the MIT Energy Initiative as is cross campus activity, Ernie Moniz and Bob Armstrong started out as co-directors, but Ernie became the director and Bob the Associate Director. And really enjentered a kind of not just enthusiasm, but again, the regional advantage to, I think, really advance technologies, policies, economics for a sustainable energy future.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was not an idea that I brought to MIT was an idea that was here. Right. And as I explored it, I discovered dozens of fantastically important energy research projects that were not yet seeing the light of day because it was one by one.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that we can do more with our resources than we could do on our own. And truth be told that if there's a theme for my presidency, it really was that. Among the things that we started when I was president was the MIT Energy Initiative. Cross campus activity because when I arrived, I heard from almost everyone I talked to when I asked the question of what were MIT's opportunities and responsibilities for the next decade. The answer I got invariably was we should be doing more to invent the sustainable energy future.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It did. And we lost it. And one of the things I studied when I came to MIT is Annalie Saxinian's book. On regional advantage, because I wanted to understand the difference between the Boston region's innovation economy. Silicon Valley's innovation economy And she's quite insightful about what it takes to build these kinds of vibrant economies, vibran ecologies. And I thought it was really interesting. So regional advantage somehow got inside my brain and has become something that I've actually pursued and tried to foster. And regional advantage in terms of what we do on campus, in terms of how we interact between campus and our industrial neighbors, frankly, how we build bridges across the academic institutions”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. And when you think about that, but a lot of the action was happening in the West, in the West, how did you relate to that when you were thinking of that? Because there was some, you know, I visit here a lot and there were some Boston companies, but really it had moved really dramatically west. With a lot of the bigger companies locating there.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At MIT, it is as smooth as just about any place. And it's respected. Faculty who live both lives are respected. One of the things that surprised me when I joined MIT is that a lot of our faculty entrepreneurs will leave to start a company for a little bit of time and come back until they have figured out how to start their next company, leave to start a company and then come back. I hadn't seen that at Yale. Faculty who started companies basically left and And then come back is a really powerful force for MIT.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So MIT has a different founding history from Yale. So MIT was founded in 1861 to deliver technologies for America's industrialization. No question. That was what William Barton Rogers, our founder, wanted to do. He felt there was no education available for the people that were needed to take this nation into the industrial age. And so MIT, Rensselaer, West Point were all founded about the same time with the same kind of mission. So I often say that MIT was founded with tech transfer in our DNA. Right. The idea that this would be commercialized. Absolutely. And so while at other schools, this business from moving from the academy into industry is a little awkward.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anyway, so by the time I was recruited to be MIT's president, I had already made the transition from being a full-time researcher and educator to being essentially a full-time academic leader. Talk a little bit about that, how you create innovation, because you've worked at places, especially MIT, where you create innovation. You're trying, you both work for the government, you have people that go into startups. It's sort of the way people move into these companies. How did you think about it when you came here? Because you came in 2000 before. So it was the sort of the, right after the internet bubble burst and then was back, was coming back, pre-Facebook, pre-a lot of the most recent things. How did you look at your role of what you were supposed to do for your students? You know, the biotech revolution had begun, but hadn't reached the kind of intensity that it now has.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Similarly, the strength built not just in the physical sciences, but also in the life sciences. A number of our faculty have won Nobel Prizes in physiology and medicine for their discoveries in fundamental biology”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Interesting first was that I was the first life scientist to be president of MIT, and that was in some ways, which is known for engineering and really computer engineering particularly. Engineering of all chemicals, mechanical engineering materials, you know, electrical. We've got a full array of spectacular engineering departments, a great school of engineering. But very, very strong science, strengthened science really dates to the time before World War II, when a physicist became MIT's president, Carl Taylor Compton, was invited to be president of MIT to build strength in the sciences, recognizing that this pairing of science with engineering was critical to developing technologies for the future. And indeed, that is the 20th century technology story.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As a scientist and educator, was that people had stepped up into these roles, and it was about time for me to step up for the next generation. My graduate education changed my life, dramatically changed my life, and opened worlds that I didn't even know existed to me. And I felt it was time for me to do the same for others. So I told Rick that I would be dean of the graduate school of arts and sciences for three years before going back full-time to my research. Needless to say. You didn't. I did not return full-time to my research, but then moved on to be provost at Yale. And then from there to come to MIT was an interesting transition. People often remark on my having been the first woman to be president at MIT, but perhaps the more...”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A story by itself. MIT recruited me to be its president. I joined MIT in 2004. And what did you think at the time when you were going to do that? You're going to be the president of MIT? I mean, there's a different track of someone who's a neuroscientist doing their work, right? Which you need to work on and then running an institution. What was your thought someone you were doing it? So the real transition for me happened when Rick Levin invited me to be dean of the graduate school. And like many faculty members, many scholars, many academics, I had not really considered taking on any kind of academic leadership role because that seemed to me to be really kind of on the sideline of what was really mattered, which was teaching students and doing cutting-edge research. And when he first approached me, I demoured. I went home and thought about it, and I realized that the reason I had had such a spectacularly interesting, successful, and productive career.”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, MIT is a really amazing place, and our country is blessed with a lot of phenomenal universities, places of fantastic research and great education. MIT is a little different from many of them. I spent 20 years at Yale University before coming to MIT. I often make the comment perhaps a little too cheeky that MIT and Yale reciprocal institutions both are known for great strengths, Yale and the humanities and social sciences, MIT for the sciences and engineering, and yet even with those great strengths, we have both institutions really strong representation in the other disciplines. Right, right, absolutely. I joined Yale on the faculty as a neuroscientist and spent most of my career there, my scientific career there, and then was recruited into academic leadership by the then president Rick Levin. And that's a...”
2019-05-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Susan Hockfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT