Howard Hughes’s Next President: ‘Promote Under-Represented Groups in Science’

February 17, 2016

(Nature) – Erin O’Shea, a biochemist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will from September this year become the sixth president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in Chevy Chase, Maryland — one of the richest biomedical research organizations in the world. O’Shea, who studies the way cells sense and respond to changes in their environment, already serves as the HHMI’s vice-president and chief scientific officer, and will be its first female president. She talks to Nature about what lies ahead for the institute, which has spent almost US$8 billion over the past decade on research and science education.