New director named at Harvard Genomics Center

Jeremy R. Knowles, Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), has appointed Andrew Murray, professor of molecular and cellular biology, director of the Faculty’s Center for Genomics Research.

Murray, who will join the FAS Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology as he takes up his new duties, comes to Harvard from 11 years at the University of California at San Francisco, where he was professor of physiology. He was educated at Clare College, Cambridge, England, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard’s Division of Medical Sciences. As a graduate student, he made the first artificial chromosomes. The focus of his research is the molecular mechanisms by which mitotic checkpoints are implemented to impose “quality control” in the process of cell division. He is internationally recognized in the field of chromosome organization and cell-cycle control mechanisms.

The Center for Genomics Research was established in 1999 as part of a multiyear FAS initiative in the sciences for which nearly $200 million has been earmarked. The center is one of five extant or planned research foci that comprise this effort. To date, the center has brought together more than 50 faculty members in the FAS, the Medical School, and the School of Public Health in projects for which it provides technical support, instrumentation, training, and analysis. The newly established Center for Genomics Research Fellows Program seeks to involve an outstanding group of researchers and technicians in the coming years; and a Life Sciences Building currently under construction will house the center and other researchers.

Stuart Schreiber of Harvard’s Chemistry Department and Douglas Melton of the Molecular and Cellular Biology Department serve as scientific co-directors of the Center, and George Busby is its director of administration.