Erin O’Shea was named the sixth president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The Institute, founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, is a nonprofit organization that is one of the nation’s leading funders of biomedical research. Over the past decade, the Institute has provided almost $8 billion in direct support for research and science education.
Dr. O’Shea is the Paul C. Mangelsdorf Professor of molecular and cellular biology and a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University. She has served as the institute’s chief scientific officer since 2013 and has been associated with the institute since 2000. Dr. O’Shea will be the first woman president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Professor O’Shea is a graduate of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.