Awards + Announcements

Researchers in the lab of Whitehead Institute Member Pulin Li have developed a powerful new computational  approach to understand how cells communicate with each other to assemble into tissues and organs. Their framework has the potential to accelerate stem cell engineering, improve disease models, and even inform cancer treatments.

The Whitehead Institute, together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts), invites applications for a tenure-track appointment at the Assistant Professor level.

The longtime Harvard Business School professor and member of Whitehead Institute’s Finance Committee joins the Board with deep expertise in leadership and organizational decision-making.

Whitehead Institute has received three grants from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center to add advanced instruments to its Innovation Centers, strengthening shared resources that help scientists sort rare cells, image molecules inside cells, and measure and map the physical connections among proteins.

The Whitehead Institute community fondly remembers Brit d’Arbeloff, Director Emerita of the Board and longtime friend and supporter of the Institute. 

Whitehead Institute AI Fellow Na Sun has received a 2026 NIH Director’s Early Independence Award, which will support her research using artificial intelligence to study how cells communicate across tissues and organs in health and disease.

Whitehead Institute Member Jonathan Weissman has been named to a newly funded Cancer Grand Challenges team that will tackle one of the most elusive frontiers in cancer biology: the “dark proteome.” The interdisciplinary team will receive up to $25 million over approximately five years to investigate proteins expressed by cancer cells that don’t correspond exactly to known genes.

The memorial honored the Nobel Prize–winning scientist and reflected on his profound impact on modern biology, the institutions he shaped, and the generations of scientists he mentored.

Zuri Sullivan, an immunologist who studies how the immune system communicates with the brain to shape behavior during infection, joins Whitehead Institute this January as a Member.

The Whitehead Institute Board of Directors has elected Peter Grauer, a business leader and philanthropist who served as the longtime chairman of Bloomberg LP, to a six-year term beginning in December 2025.