The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) announced today that Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers Dr. Tobias Walther and Dr. Pardis Sabeti are among 26 new HHMI investigators. HHMI will provide each investigator with his or her full salary, benefits, and a research budget over their initial five-year appointment, which is expected to begin in September 2015. Dr. Walther is professor of genetics and complex diseases at Harvard Chan School, professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Dr. Sabeti is an associate professor in the department of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard Chan School, senior associate member at the Broad Institute, and an associate professor at the Center for Systems Biology in Harvard’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

The new HHMI investigators were selected for their individual scientific excellence from a group of 894 eligible applicants. Mid-career researchers with five to 15 years of experience as faculty members at more than 200 institutions were eligible to apply. HHMI investigators have the freedom to explore and, if necessary, to change direction in their research. Moreover, they have support to follow their ideas through to fruition — even if that process takes many years. Read more