Hazel Sive

Hazel L. Sive is a South African-born biologist and educator. She is a Member of Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Professor of Biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Sive studies development of the vertebrate embryo, and has made unique contributions to understanding how the face forms and how the brain develops its normal structure. Her lab also seeks to understand the origins of neurological and neurodevelopmental disorderss, such as epilepsy, autism, Pitt–Hopkins syndrome and 16p11.2 deletion syndrome.

Sive received her Bachelor of Science with honors in 1979 from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa with a double-major in zoology and chemistry. She left South Africa for England to teach science at the secondary school level before going to the United States to receive her PhD from Rockefeller University. Her scientific accomplishments include "[d]efin[ing] the extreme anterior domain as a crucial region of face development," as well as identifying novel genes which play a role in brain development.

Besides running her eponymous lab, she is also a faculty member at the Whitehead Institute. She began teaching at MIT in 1991 and was chosen as a Searle Scholar the following year. She received the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1992, as well.

Dr. Sive also teaches four courses through MIT OpenCourseWare, an online open education initiative.