Susan Lindquist
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dr. Lindquist received her Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University. She is currently a professor of biology at MIT, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. The central theme of Dr. Lindquist's research is to explore the impact of protein conformational changes on diverse processes in cellular and organismal biology. She is exploiting our understanding of protein folding to gain insights into the basis of neurodegenerative diseases and spongiform encephalopathies, and to design therapeutic strategies. In addition to the role that misfolded proteins play in disease, she has also identified potentially important beneficial effects of self-perpetuating alternate protein conformations, including mechanisms of evolutionary change and long-term memory.