Whitehead Institute

Whitehead Institute was founded in 1982 by industrialist and philanthropist Edwin C. “Jack” Whitehead (1920–1992), who sought to establish a research institute "dedicated to improving human health through basic biomedical science". Whitehead believed that while such an institution should be closely affiliated with an academic institution, it should remain wholly independent and self-governing. In David Baltimore (1975 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine), Whitehead found a partner who agreed that this approach would create an "optimum environment for basic research". As Whitehead Institute's founding directors, Baltimore handpicked Harvey Lodish, and Robert Weinberg from MIT, Gerald Fink from Cornell University, and Rudolf Jaenisch from University of Hamburg, Germany, to be Whitehead Institute's founders. This group then identified promising younger scientists to be the first generation of Whitehead members; and they established the Whitehead Fellows Program as a vehicle for accelerating the careers of highly promising young investigators. Less than a decade after its founding, the Institute for Scientific Information in Philadelphia identified Whitehead as the top research institution in the world in molecular biology and genetics, based on the impact of its scientific publications. Sanofi Genzyme, Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Rubius Therapeutics, and Verastem. In 2019, according to the NACUBO report, the institute had an endowment of $527.9 million. == Faculty ==

The Whitehead faculty currently comprises 19 members whose laboratories focus on biology's most fundamental questions. The Members, who are all also MIT faculty members, are: • David Bartel • Iain Cheeseman • Olivia Corradin • Gerald R. Fink • Mary Gehring • Rudolf Jaenisch • Ankur Jain • Ruth Lehmann • Pulin Li • Harvey F. Lodish • Sebastian Lourido • David C. Page • Peter W. Reddien • Robert A. Weinberg • Jonathan Weissman • Jing-Ke Weng • Yukiko Yamashita • Richard A. Young == Fellows Program ==

In addition to faculty-led labs, the Whitehead Fellows Program, established in 1984, provides an opportunity for highly accomplished recent PhDs and MDs to direct their own labs as Principal Investigators, rather than work in a senior researcher's lab as a traditional postdoctoral researcher. Fellows receive dedicated lab space and funds for equipment, lab operations, salary, and core staffing. More than a dozen similar programs have since been established around the country, including those at the University of California/San Francisco, Carnegie Institution, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Past Whitehead Fellows include George Q. Daley, Dean of Harvard Medical School; Angelika Amon, the late MIT professor and cancer researcher; Kathleen Rubins, NASA astronaut and space biologist; and Stanford University professor Peter S. Kim, who was the former President of Merck Research Laboratories (MRL). Current Whitehead Fellows include Lindsey Backman, who studies the human microbiome; Tobiloba Oni, who studies pancreatic cancer; and Kipp Weiskopf, who studies activation of myeloid cells in tumors to treat cancer. ==See also==