When Sally Kornbluth becomes MIT’s 18th president on January 1, 2023, she joins a long line of leaders that includes mathematicians, chemists, physicists, engineers, an astronomer, a neurobiologist, two Rad Lab researchers, a US Census superintendent, a dean of the Sloan School, and an editor of Technology Review—many of whom served as scientific advisors to US presidents. Kornbluth, a cell biologist, should fit right in. Read more about the past presidents at technologyreview.com/presidents.