Whitehead Institute

The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research is a nonprofit research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, established in 1982 by philanthropist Edwin C. Whitehead to advance human health through fundamental scientific investigation. Though fiscally independent of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it maintains close ties to the university, and all of its faculty members hold appointments in MIT's Department of Biology or Department of Bioengineering, concentrating research on cancer biology, developmental biology, genetics, genomics, metabolism, neurodegenerative disease, and regenerative medicine. The institute contributed roughly a third of the human genome sequence announced in 2000, and has repeatedly been ranked among the best postdoctoral workplaces in the life sciences by The Scientist magazine.