Sarah Hokanson
Assistant Vice President and Assistant Provost, Research Development and PhD & Postdoctoral Affairs
Sarah is responsible for postdoctoral affairs, professional development programming and resources for doctoral students and postdocs across the University, and developing research development resources to support faculty in obtaining and leading extramural funding programs. She also provides resources for faculty mentors and PIs applying for grants related to doctoral and postdoctoral training. Sarah is the multi-PI of the Postdoc Academy, a $1.8m NIH project focused on providing digital and in-person professional development opportunities for postdocs nationwide. She is co-PI of an NSF AGEP Alliance (CIRTL AGEP) focused on improving the research climate for graduate students and postdocs, and is co-Director of the Workforce Development Core within Boston University’s NSF Engineering Research Center (CELL-MET). Sarah serves in leadership positions nationally, including most recently on the AAMC Postdoctoral Leaders Steering Committee and the Cross Network Operations Group within the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) Network.
Prior to joining Boston University, Sarah was US Deputy Director of Science and Innovation at the British Consulate-General, Boston. Sarah holds a BA in Chemistry from Boston University and a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine. Sarah’s graduate research was supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, and she completed a NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cornell University in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. She received an Executive Education Certificate from MIT Sloan School of Management’s Entrepreneurship Development Program in 2014.