Speaker Detail

Susan Lindquist is a professor of biology at MIT's Whitehead Institute and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Previously Lindquist served as director of the Whitehead Institute and was on the faculty of the University of Chicago. Lindquist is a pioneer in the field of protein folding. Her work has demonstrated that alternative protein conformations have profound and unexpected effects in fields as wide-ranging as human disease, evolution and biomaterials. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the Institute of Medicine. Her honors include the Dickson Prize in Medicine and the Genetics Society of America Medal. She is a member of the board of Johnson & Johnson and co-founder of the biotech firm FoldRx Pharmaceuticals. Lindquist received her Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University and was a postdoctoral fellow of the American Cancer Society at the University of Chicago.