Founded in 1982, the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research is a non-profit research and teaching institution located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The Whitehead Institute was founded as a fiscally independent entity from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and its members and associate members hold faculty appointments in MIT's Biology Department.
The institute is one of the world's leading centers for genomic research. Its Center for Genome Research was active in the Human Genome Project, and reportedly contributed one-third of the human genome sequence announced in June 2000.
In June 2003, Eli and Edythe L. Broad pledged $100 million to build the Broad Institute, a joint venture of Whitehead, MIT, Harvard and local teaching hospitals. The new venture's mission is to expand tools for genomic medicine and apply them for the treatment of disease.
Whitehead has a world-renowned faculty that includes the recipients of the 1997 and 2010 National Medal of Science (Robert Weinberg and Susan Lindquist, respectively); nine Members of the National Academy of Sciences (David Bartel, Gerald Fink, Rudolf Jaenisch, Eric Lander, Susan Lindquist, Harvey Lodish, Terry Orr-Weaver, David Page, and Weinberg); three Members of the Institute of Medicine (Fink, Lander, and Weinberg); and seven Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Jaenisch, Fink, Lander, Lindquist, Lodish, Page and Weinberg.) All Whitehead faculty are also members of the Biology Department at MIT. Members are tenured full and associate professors; Associate Members have tenure-track appointments. Whitehead also has an Affiliate Members program.
Famous quotes containing the words whitehead and/or institute:
“Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.”
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
“Whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it’s foundation on such principles & organising it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)