https://news.mit.edu/2022/sally-kornbluth-named-MIT-president-1020
From music to political science to genetics
Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Sally Ann Kornbluth grew up in nearby Fair Lawn. Her father, George, was a music-loving accountant; her mother, Myra, was an opera singer who performed regularly at the New York City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, and elsewhere around the world under the name Marisa Galvany.
Inspired by a high school teacher, Kornbluth studied political science as an undergraduate at Williams College. Early in her undergraduate years, she gave little thought to studying science, until she had to take a course on human biology and social issues as part of distribution requirements needed to graduate.
“I thought it was really interesting, and, once I saw what science was really about, I found it very exciting,” she recalled in a 2014 interview. “I just hadn’t had that opportunity in high school.”
After earning her BA in political science from Williams in 1982, Kornbluth received a scholarship to attend Cambridge University for two years as a Herchel Smith Scholar at Emmanuel College, ultimately earning a BA in genetics from Cambridge in 1984.
Kornbluth returned to the U.S. to pursue a PhD in molecular oncology at Rockefeller University, awarded in 1989, and then went on to postdoctoral training at the University of California at San Diego. She joined the Duke faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology in 1994, becoming an associate professor in 2000 and a full professor in 2005.