MIT World Speakers

Hazel Sive

Hazel Sive arrived at Whitehead in 1991. In 1992, she was named a Searle Scholar and received a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award. Sive earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, in chemistry and zoology and her Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in molecular biology, in 1986.

Sive traces the earliest stages of neural development in vertebrates. She has identified more than 50 genes involved in the decision to begin making neural tissue from the undifferentiated cells in a young embryo. The work could provide new insights into neurological diseases, spinal cord injuries, and cancer.