Massachusetts Institute of Technology has had 18 presidents in its 162-year history. Only two have been women. Sally Kornbluth is the second.
She took office in January 2023, bringing with her a career that zigzagged from political science to cancer research to university leadership. It’s an unconventional path to lead a technical powerhouse, which is precisely what makes it interesting.
When Science Chooses You
Sally Kornbluth didn’t always know she’d be a scientist. Growing up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, the daughter of an accountant father and an opera singer mother, she enrolled at Williams College in 1978 planning to study political science. She did. She graduated with that degree in 1982.
But something shifted. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was the realization that understanding how the world works requires understanding how life itself works. Whatever it was, Kornbluth made a sharp pivot toward biology, earning a scholarship to Cambridge University where she studied genetics. By 1989, she had a doctorate in molecular oncology from Rockefeller University, diving deep into the question that would define her research career: how do cells decide between life and death?
Her work focused on apoptosis—programmed cell death—and the ways cancer cells evade this natural process. It’s fundamental research with profound implications: understanding why some cells refuse to die could unlock treatments for diseases that kill millions. She wasn’t just publishing papers. She was asking questions that mattered.
Building While Leading
Duke University brought Kornbluth onto its faculty in 1994 as an assistant professor of pharmacology and cancer biology. She rose through the ranks—associate professor by 2000, full professor by 2005. But here’s where her story diverges from the typical trajectory of a successful researcher. In 2006, she took on her first major administrative role as vice dean for basic science at Duke School of Medicine. Eight years later, she became Duke’s provost—the first woman to hold that position.
As provost, Kornbluth didn’t just manage. She transformed. Under her leadership, Duke created an Office for Faculty Advancement that grew the number of Black faculty from 67 in 2017 to over 100. She pushed for scholarships targeting first-generation students. She oversaw the launch of Duke Kunshan University in China, expanding the institution’s global reach. And she did something that might seem unremarkable but is actually revolutionary in academia: she made female deans the majority at Duke.
This wasn’t diversity for optics. This was Kornbluth understanding that excellence requires different perspectives, different experiences, different voices at the table where decisions get made.
Taking the Helm at MIT
When MIT’s search committee began looking for their 18th president in 2022, they sifted through roughly 250 candidates. They wanted someone who understood MIT’s culture, cared about the people who create it, and wasn’t afraid to challenge it. They chose Kornbluth.
She started in January 2023, and immediately signaled this wouldn’t be business as usual. Her inaugural address outlined objectives that matched the scale of global challenges: accelerating work on climate change, strengthening links between engineering and life sciences, harnessing AI for societal good. Within her first year, she launched the Climate Project at MIT—a comprehensive initiative driving technological, behavioral, and policy solutions to change the trajectory of global climate outcomes.
In 2024, she introduced the MIT Human Insight Collaborative, fostering new partnerships between faculty in arts, humanities, and social sciences with their colleagues in engineering and science. Then came MIT HEALS, the Health and Life Sciences Collaborative, designed to accelerate solutions to society’s most urgent health challenges.
These aren’t just initiatives. They’re institutional pivots that recognize the complexity of modern problems demands interdisciplinary thinking.
Leading Through Complexity
Kornbluth’s tenure hasn’t been without controversy. In December 2023, alongside presidents from Harvard and Penn, she testified before Congress about antisemitism on university campuses following the Hamas attack on Israel. Her nuanced responses drew criticism from multiple sides; a reality for anyone leading a community where free speech, safety, and strongly held convictions collide.
But she didn’t retreat. She stayed, continued leading, continued pushing MIT toward solutions that matter. Because that’s what leaders do when the work is important and the challenges are real.
What Drives Her
Ask people who’ve worked with Kornbluth, and they describe someone who’s “decisive and plain-spoken,” a “powerhouse administrator” who’s also deeply curious and fundamentally kind. She does needlepoint portraits of dogs. She loves folk music and political dramas. She believes liberal arts education led her to science, and she advocates for that same intellectual breadth for others.
She’s a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. But these honors matter less than the culture she’s building—one where MIT’s famous motto “mens et manus” (mind and hand) extends to solving the defining problems of our time.
At 65, Kornbluth leads an institution with an $24 billion endowment, roughly 11,000 students, and outsized influence on technology, policy, and innovation worldwide. She’s using that position not just to maintain MIT’s excellence, but to direct it toward climate, health, and the ethical development of artificial intelligence.
Her journey from political science student to cancer researcher to university president proves something important: leadership isn’t about following the expected path. It’s about bringing your full self—your curiosity, your conviction, your courage—to work that’s bigger than any one person.
And right now, MIT needs exactly that.
Sally Kornbluth,
President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
