November 16, 1999
David A. Clayton and Gerald M. Rubin Named Vice Presidents of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
The Trustees of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have elected David A. Clayton as vice president for science development, and Gerald M. Rubin as vice president for biomedical research. Both appointments are effective January 1, 2000.
Clayton is a senior scientific officer at the Institute, a position he has held since 1996. He joined the Institute from Stanford University, where he was a professor of both pathology and developmental biology and associate director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine.
Rubin is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Genetics in the department of molecular and cellular biology.
"The high regard with which both of these fine scientists are held by the biomedical science community was an important consideration in the decision to recruit them," said Thomas R. Cech, president-designate of the Hughes Institute, who takes office on January 1, 2000.
Clayton will provide leadership for new programs "to enhance molecular medicine and physician-scientist careers," said Cech, noting that Clayton’s 20-year stint as director of Stanford’s medical scientist training program gives him a strong background for this role. Clayton will also have responsibility in his new position for "long-term planning for the Institute’s science and grants programs," Cech said. In addition, he will be responsible for facilities and space, not only for individual Hughes scientists, but for shared resources such as synchrotron beamlines and animal facilities.
As vice president for biomedical research, Cech said, "Gerry Rubin will be responsible for running national competitions for the selection of new Hughes investigators, as well as the review of investigators for reappointment." He also noted that the Institute would look to Rubin to take the lead in determining how it can best make an impact on the burgeoning fields of bioinformatics and computational biology, areas in which Rubin has expert knowledge.
Purnell Choppin, current president of the Institute, said that he was "extremely pleased with the appointment of this outstanding new team." He noted that both Clayton and Rubin are creative scientists with long experience in biomedical research.
Clayton, 55, was an undergraduate at Northern Illinois University and received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1970. After doing postdoctoral work at the City of Hope National Medical Center, he joined the Stanford faculty in 1970. He was promoted to professor of pathology in 1982 and was appointed professor of developmental biology in 1989. He is a geneticist who has made major contributions to our understanding of the role of mitochondrial genes and of the many human genetic disorders that occur following mutation of these genes. Clayton is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
Rubin, 49, received his bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned his Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Cambridge in England. He did postdoctoral work at the Stanford University School of Medicine before joining Harvard Medical School in 1977 as an assistant professor of biological chemistry. In 1980 he joined the Carnegie Institution of Washington as a staff member in the department of embryology, and three years later he moved to the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, as the John D. MacArthur Professor of Genetics. He has been a Howard Hughes investigator since 1987. Rubin is a leader of the effort to sequence the entire genome of the fruit fly
Drosophila
. In addition, his laboratory has used a variety of genetic techniques to determine the function of fruit fly genes that have homology to human genes. Rubin is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is one of the largest philanthropic institutions in the world. Its principal purpose is the conduct of biomedical research, which it accomplishes in collaboration with more than 70 major research universities and other institutions throughout the United States. HHMI employs more than 300 distinguished scientists, called investigators, each of whom has an outstanding research team. Its complementary grants program supports science education at every level in the United States and the work of selected scientists in many other countries. The Institute was established in 1953 by the aviator-industrialist Howard R. Hughes.
Photo: Paul Fetters
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Howard Hughes
