Fred R. Lummis, a Houston businessman and entrepreneur, has been elected a Trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He becomes one of 11 Trustees of the Institute, a medical research organization dedicated to the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge in the life sciences.

Lummis, 56, is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Platform Partners LLC., a Houston, Texas based investment company that he cofounded in 2006. Before founding Platform Partners, he managed private equity investments for two successor firms, The CapStreet Group and Summit Capital.

	Fred R. Lummis Elected a Trustee of HHMI Photo: Courtesy of Fred Lummis A high-resolution photograph is available on request. Request a photo

Lummis began his business career at Texas Commerce Bank in 1978 and ultimately managed a venture capital portfolio for the bank before becoming Senior Vice President of the private investment firm of Duncan, Cook & Co. in 1986. From 1994 to 1998, Lummis served as Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer and as a director until 2008 for American Tower Corporation, which is today the largest independent operator and owner of telecommunications towers in the world. In 1998, he took over Advantage Outdoor Co. and managed its operations until its merger with Lamar Advertising Co. in 2000.

A trustee of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston since 1996, Lummis also serves as Chairman of Cardtronics and a director of Landmark FBO, TRE Financial Services, Avalon Advisors, and Amegy Bancorporation. He is a cum laude graduate of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., where he captained the men’s tennis team and received his M.B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. He is married to Claudia, his wife of 33 years, and they have three grown sons.

Lummis and his family have a long association with HHMI. His father, William R. Lummis, served as a charter Trustee of the Institute for more than two decades until his retirement in 2007. The elder Lummis played a critical role in the reorganization of the Institute following the death of Howard R. Hughes, Jr., the Institute's founder and Lummis' cousin.

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The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit medical research organization that ranks as one of the nation's largest philanthropies, plays a powerful role in advancing biomedical research and science education in the United States. The Institute is a nonprofit medical research organization that employs hundreds of leading biomedical scientists working at the forefront of their fields. In addition, through its grants program and other activities, HHMI is helping to enhance science education at all levels and maintain the vigor of biomedical science worldwide. HHMI's endowment at the end of the 2009 fiscal year was approximately $14 billion.