Nobel laureate Thomas Cech of the University of Colorado at Boulder has been selected to become the next president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute by the organization聮s trustees beginning in January of 2000.
Cech, who has been a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator since 1988, will continue as a distinguished professor at CU-Boulder and professor at the CU Health Sciences Center in Denver. Cech shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Sidney Altman of Yale University for their independent discoveries that RNA can act as a catalyst in cell development.
"This is an extraordinarily high honor for Tom Cech, the University of Colorado and the state," said CU-Boulder Chancellor Richard L. Byyny. "The fact that Tom聮s commitment to his students and research colleagues on campus will continue is gratifying to all of us."
Cech said he will keep his home in Boulder and also maintain a residence in the Maryland-Washington, D.C., area. The HHMI headquarters is located in Chevy Chase, Md. Cech will succeed Purnell W. Choppin, president of the Institute since 1987, who announced last year he would retire at the end of 1999.
"This is a very exciting opportunity to do the two things I love best, conducting biomedical research and overseeing science education, now on a national level," said Cech.
Cech plans to shuttle back and forth between HHMI headquarters and his laboratory at CU-Boulder.
"I think it is crucial for a leader of a scientific institution to stay in touch with doing real science," he said. "It is important to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and important to me personally to continue to interact with students doing quality research and participate in their development as scientists."
In the past year, Cech聮s team at CU-Boulder and a research group from Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, Calif., discovered the human gene for the active component of an enzyme known as telomerase that lengthens the ends of chromosomes. The finding could lead to improved cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Cech will be teaching a core course in biochemistry to CU-Boulder graduate students during the fall 1999 semester. After that, his teaching for the next few years will concentrate on students in research.
In addition to teaching past introductory chemistry classes to CU-Boulder freshmen, Cech continues to participate in The CU Wizards series, an annual program that provides an informal introduction to astronomy, chemistry and physics by various faculty. The next program in the series, "Chemical Reactions, Forward and Backward," will be presented by Cech on April 24 in the Chemistry building, room 140.