- published: 04 Dec 2015
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The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (/ˈbroʊd/), often referred to as the Broad Institute, is a biomedical and genomic research center located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The institute is independently governed and supported as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research organization under the name Broad Institute Inc., and is partners with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the five Harvard teaching hospitals.
The Broad Institute, formerly the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, evolved from a decade of research collaborations among MIT and Harvard scientists. One cornerstone was the Center for Genome Research of Whitehead Institute at MIT. Founded in 1982, the Whitehead became a major center for genomics and the Human Genome Project. As early as 1995, scientists at the Whitehead started pilot projects in genomic medicine, forming an unofficial collaborative network among young scientists interested in genomic approaches to cancer and human genetics. Another cornerstone was the Institute of Chemistry and Cell Biology established by Harvard Medical School in 1998 to pursue chemical genetics as an academic discipline. Its screening facility was one of the first high-throughput resources opened in an academic setting. It facilitated small molecule screening projects for more than 80 research groups worldwide.
Eric Steven Lander (born February 3, 1957), a mathematician and geneticist, is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), former member of the Whitehead Institute, and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard who has devoted his career to realizing the promise of the human genome for medicine. He is co-chair of U.S. President Barack Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Lander was raised in a Jewish family, the son of Harold and Rhoda Lander who were both lawyers. He was captain of the math team at Stuyvesant High School and an International Mathematical Olympiad Silver Medalist for the United States, graduating from high school in 1974. At the age of seventeen, he wrote a paper on quasiperfect numbers for which he won the Westinghouse Prize.
Lander attended Princeton University, where he graduated in 1978 as valedictorian. He then attended the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and he wrote his doctoral D.Phil. thesis on algebraic coding theory and symmetric block designs, under the supervision of Peter Cameron.
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