UK'S LARGEST CHARITY APPOINTS PRE-EMINENT US CANCER RESEARCHER AS SCIENTIFIC GOVERNOR

2 January 2007

The UK's largest charity, the Wellcome Trust, is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Richard Hynes as a new Scientific Governor with effect from January 2007.

Professor Hynes is Daniel K Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at the Center for Cancer Research (CCR) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. He has previously served as Head of the Biology Department and Director of the CCR at MIT. His research is concerned with understanding the molecular basis of cell adhesion and its involvement in cell behaviour, including contributions to human disease.

With a career spanning three decades, Professor Hynes received a BA and MA in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in biology from MIT in 1971. After doing postdoctoral work at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories in London, where he initiated his early work on cell adhesion, he returned to MIT as a founding faculty member of the CCR.

Professor Hynes's lab focuses on the molecular basis of cellular adhesion using cellular and molecular biology, mouse genetics and other approaches. From his childhood, Hynes gravitated towards science. His father was a freshwater ecologist and his mother a college physics teacher. He chose science as a natural career and never looked back. He once commented: "Science is intellectually exciting and entertaining, and the boundary between work and hobby is hard to define. It's good to be employed to play at what you do."

Speaking of the appointment, Chairman of the Wellcome Trust Bill Castell commented:

"With $1 billion annual spend in science to improve human and animal health, it's great that the Wellcome Trust can bring on board a pre-eminent US scientist who will strengthen our global perspective."

Notes to editors

Mike Findlay
Wellcome Trust Media Office
T +44 (0)20 76118612
E m.findlay@wellcome.ac.uk

The Wellcome Trust is the largest charity in the UK and the second largest medical research charity in the world. It funds innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally, spending around £500 million each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust supports public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health and wellbeing.