Phillip Sharp appointed to Whitehead
Board of Directors
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (May 11, 2005)—Phillip Sharp,
Nobel laureate and founding director of the McGovern
Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, has been named to the Board of Directors
of Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
“I am very pleased to welcome Phil Sharp to the
Whitehead Board,” says Alex d'Arbeloff, chairman
of the Whitehead Board of Directors. “Phil’s
standing in the academic community and the biotech industry
is outstanding. He is a great addition to our Board.”
“Whitehead Institute is among the leading research
organizations in biomedical science and I am proud to
have the opportunity as a Board member to help it continue
this outstanding record of accomplishments,” says
Sharp.
Much of Sharp’s scientific work has occurred
at MIT’s Center for Cancer Research, which he
joined in 1974 and directed from 1985 to 1991, after
which he became chair of the Biology Department from
1991 to 1999.
Sharp’s landmark achievement was the 1977 discovery
of RNA splicing. This provided one of the earliest indications
of “discontinuous genes” in mammalian cells
(genes contain “nonsense” segments that
cells edit out when they produce protein). Sharp’s
research opened an entirely new area in molecular biology
and forever changed the field. For this work he shared
the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
The author of more than 300 scientific papers, Sharp
serves on many scientific committees, including the
National Cancer Institute’s Advisory Board. His
honors and awards include the Gairdner Foundation International
Award, General Motors Research Foundation Alfred P.
Sloan, Jr. Prize for Cancer Research, Louisa Gross Horwitz
Prize, and Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences,
the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.
Sharp is also an Institute Professor at MIT, a title
reserved for those few individuals who have “demonstrated
exceptional distinction by a combination of leadership,
accomplishment and service in the scholarly, educational
and general intellectual life of the Institute or wider
academic community.” There are currently only
15 Institute Professors at MIT, and another one, Robert
Langer, also serves on Whitehead’s Board of Directors.
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