Two Women Scholars Named Science Envoys by the U.S. State Department

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently appointed three new Science Envoys who will travel the world to “seek to deepen existing ties, foster new relationships with foreign counterparts and discuss potential areas of collaboration that will help address global challenges and realize shared goals.”

Two of the three new Science Envoys are women with ties to the academic world.

Barbara A Schaal is the Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis. She will become dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the university in January.

Dr. Schaal joined the Washington University faculty in 1980 and was promoted to full professor in 1986. She is the first woman to have served as vice president of the National Academy of Sciences. Professor Schaal holds a Ph.D. in population biology from Yale University.

Susan Hockfield, who stepped down as the 16th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology earlier this year, remains on the MIT faculty as a professor of neuroscience. She also serves as the Marie Curie Visiting Professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Before becoming president of MIT in 2004, Dr. Hockfield was the William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology and provost at Yale University. Her research is focused on brain cancer.

Dr. Hockfield is a graduate of the University of Rochester and holds a Ph.D. from the Georgetown University School of Medicine.