Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
UNUSUAL PROGRAM Keck Foundation Awards $1.25M Grant to Whitehead By Eve Nichols Whitehead Institute The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research has received a five- year, $1.25 million medical research grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles, Calif., to help support an unusual program devoted to the development of promising young scientists. The Whitehead Institute Fellows Program, begun in 1984, provides an opportunity for selected young investigators to bypass traditional apprenticeship positions and develop their own independent research efforts. The program provides each Whitehead Fellow with an equipped laboratory, salary and benefits, administrative and laboratory support, and some project funds for three to five years. Fellows are expected to raise additional project funds from granting agencies. Dr. Gerald Fink, director of the Whitehead Institute, explains that the Whitehead Institute Fellows Program enables gifted young scientists to make the most of their natural creativity at a time when they are unencumbered by academic responsibilities and the concerns of leading a large laboratory. The Fellows have numerous opportunities for interactions with colleagues at the Whitehead Institute, MIT and other academic institutions, but are not required to teach or assume other nonresearch duties. Candidates for appointment as Fellows do not apply; they are recruited by the director of the Whitehead Institute upon recommendation of members of the Institute's Board of Advisory Scientists. Among the nine current and past Whitehead Institute Fellows, two have been Rhodes Scholars, one was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, two have won MacArthur Prize Fellowships during their Whitehead Fellowships, and one was the first-place winner in the 1974 Westinghouse Science Talent Search. Studies by one current Whitehead Fellow and his associates have solved a major mystery surrounding the virus that causes AIDS and, in the process, revealed a new form of gene regulation. Two other Fellows study different aspects of the machinery responsible for converting complex genetic information into protein molecules. The fourth Fellow now in residence at Whitehead, a biophysicist, employs a graphics supercomputing workstation to explore mechanisms responsible for molecular recognition. His work will have long-term practical applications in the field of drug design. Among the five Fellows who have completed their appointments, one is an assistant professor at the University of California at San Francisco Medical School, two are assistant professors at MIT and the Whitehead Institute, one heads a laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and one is a tenured associate professor at MIT and a member of the Whitehead Institute. The Whitehead Institute is a nonprofit, independent research and teaching institution founded in 1982 with a gift of $135 million from Edwin C. (Jack) Whitehead. The modern Whitehead Building adjacent to the MIT campus houses 20 laboratories, occupied by approximately 250 faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduates. All members and associate members of the Whitehead Institute are also members of the biology faculty at MIT. The students are from MIT, as well as Harvard, Tufts and Brandeis universities. The W.M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 by the late William Myron Keck, founder of The Superior Oil Company, one of the nation's largest independent oil companies. Originally created to support accredited colleges and universities with particular emphasis on the sciences, engineering and medical research, the Foundation has grown considerably under the leadership of the founder's son, Howard B. Keck, its current chairman, and is now one of the nation's largest charitable organizations. The Foundation also maintains a Southern California Grant Program that provides support in the areas of civic and community services, health care, precollegiate education and the arts. In the past six years alone, the W.M. Keck Foundation has distributed over $150 million in grants in addition to funding its major initiative, construction of the W.M. Keck Telescopes and Observatory on the island of Hawaii.