Sally Ann Kornbluth is a cell biologist and the

James B. Duke Professor At Duke University, the title of James B. Duke Professor is given to a small number of the faculty with extraordinary records of achievement. At some universities, titles like "distinguished professor", "institute professor", or " regents professo ...

of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at

Duke University School of Medicine The Duke University School of Medicine, commonly known as Duke Med, is the medical school of Duke University. It is located in the Collegiate Gothic-style West Campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The School of Medicine, along wit ...

. Since 2014, she served as the Provost at Duke, and is the first woman to serve in this role. She also serves as the chair of the Duke Kunshan University Board of Trustees. Kornbluth will become the 18th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in January 2023. She will be the second female president of the university.

Early life and education

Kornbluth grew up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Her mother,

Marisa Galvany Marisa Galvany (born June 19, 1936) is an American soprano who had an active international career performing in operas and concerts up into the early 2000s. Known for the great intensity of her performances, Galvany particularly excelled in port ...

, was an opera singer. Kornbluth received a B.A. in political science from Williams College in 1982 and a B.S. in genetics from Cambridge University in 1984, where she was a Herchel Smith Scholar at Emmanuel College. She received a Ph.D. in

molecular oncology Molecular oncology is an interdisciplinary medical specialty at the interface of medicinal chemistry and oncology that refers to the investigation of the chemistry of cancer and tumors at the molecular scale. Also the development and applicatio ...

from the

Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and provides doctoral and postdoctoral education. It is classif ...

in 1989, working in the laboratory of

Hidesaburo Hanafusa was a Japanese virologist. He shared the 1982 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research with Harold E. Varmus and J. Michael Bishop for demonstrating how RNA tumor viruses cause cancer, and elucidating their role in combining, rescuing and ...

, and performed postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Diego with John Newport.

Career

Kornbluth became a member of the faculty at Duke University in 1994. She served as vice dean for basic sciences at Duke University School of Medicine from 2006 to 2014. Her research focuses on

cell growth Cell growth refers to an increase in the total mass of a cell, including both cytoplasmic, nuclear and organelle volume. Cell growth occurs when the overall rate of cellular biosynthesis (production of biomolecules or anabolism) is greater than ...

and programmed cell death and how cancer cells evade apoptosis. She is also interested in the role of programmed cell death in regulating the length of female fertility in vertebrates, in a mechanism regulated by

caspase-2 Caspase-2 (, ''ICH-1'', ''NEDD-2'', ''caspase-2L'', ''caspase-2S'', ''neural precursor cell expressed developmentally down-regulated protein 2'', ''CASP-2'', ''NEDD2 protein'') is an enzyme. This enzyme catalyses the following chemical reaction : ...

. She received the Basic Science Research Mentoring Award from the Duke School of Medicine in 2012 and the Distinguished Faculty Award from the Duke Medical Alumni Association in 2013. She was elected as a member of the

Institute of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, E ...

in 2013. In 2014, after a national search, she was selected as Provost of

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

, the first woman to serve in this role. As Provost, she has overseen a leadership transition in which female Deans have become a majority at Duke. Kornbluth is an advocate of liberal arts education and has stated that her own experience in a liberal arts education at Williams College led her to a career in the sciences. Ellen Davis, a professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke and a member of the search committee that selected Kornbluth as Provost, commented that Kornbluth's liberal arts education "gives her a strong base to understand and guide our programs." She is also an advocate for on-line learning as a driver of pedagogic innovation. In her capacity of Chair of the Board of Trustees at Duke Kunshan University, Kornbluth has overseen the appointment of

Al Bloom Alfred H. Bloom is an American psychologist and linguist. He was the executive vice chancellor of Duke Kunshan University from 2020 to 2021. Before that, he was the vice chancellor of New York University Abu Dhabi from 2008 to 2019 and the presid ...

as the university's Executive Vice Chancellor in 2020, and the launch of the WHU-Duke Research Institute in collaboration with Duke and Wuhan universities in 2014. In 2022, Kornbluth was selected as the 18th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and will succeed L. Rafael Reif in this role in 2023.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kornbluth, Sally Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American microbiologists Women microbiologists Duke University faculty Williams College alumni Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge Rockefeller University alumni Members of the National Academy of Medicine