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Howard Hughes Medical Institute

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The Howard Hughes Medical Institute ( HHMI ) is an American non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase , Maryland . It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes , an American business magnate , investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, film director, and philanthropist , known during his lifetime as one of the most financially successful individuals in the world. It is one of the largest private funding organizations for biological and medical research in the United States . HHMI spends about $ 1 million per HHMI Investigator per year, which amounts to annual investment in biomedical research of about $ 825 million.

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20-674: The institute has an endowment of $ 22.6 billion , making it the second-wealthiest philanthropic organization in the United States and the second-best-endowed medical research foundation in the world. HHMI is the former owner of the Hughes Aircraft Company , an American aerospace firm that was divested to various firms over time. The institute was formed with the goal of basic research including trying to understand, in Hughes's words, "the genesis of life itself." Despite its principles, in

40-554: A Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971 and a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 1976. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory with James D. Watson for three years before returning to the University of California in 1979 when he was appointed assistant professor of biochemistry. In 2008, Tjian joined the Board of Directors of

60-464: A court appointed new trustees for the institute's holdings. In January 1985 the trustees announced they would sell Hughes Aircraft by private sale or public stock offering. On June 5, 1985 General Motors (GM) was announced as the winner of a secretive five-month, sealed-bid auction. The purchase was completed on December 20, 1985, for an estimated $ 5.2 billion, $ 2.7 billion in cash and the rest in 50 million shares of GM Class H stock. The proceeds caused

80-525: Is a Hong Kong-born American biochemist best known for his work on eukaryotic transcription . He is currently professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California, Berkeley and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). On April 1, 2009, Tjian became the President of HHMI . On August 4, 2015, he announced that he would step down as President at

100-467: Is also notable in drug-target studies and their applications. Tjian developed some highly efficient and sensitive techniques to detect cellular quantities such as proteins. In 1989, Tjian, together with two colleagues David Goeddel (father of MLB players Erik and Tyler Goeddel ) and Steve McKnight, co-founded Tularik Inc., a biotechnology company based in South San Francisco, California . Tularik

120-597: Is known as 100 crore or 1 arab . 1,000,000,000 is also the cube of 1000 . The facts below give a sense of how large 1,000,000,000 (10 ) is in the context of time according to current scientific evidence: A is a cube; B consists of 1000 cubes the size of cube A , C consists of 1000 cubes the size of cube B ; and D consists of 1000 cubes the size of cube C . Thus there are 1 million A -sized cubes in C ; and 1,000,000,000 A -sized cubes in D . [REDACTED] Robert Tjian Robert Tjian ( Chinese : 錢澤南 ; pinyin : Qián Zénán ; born 1949)

140-539: Is the natural number following 999,999,999 and preceding 1,000,000,001. With a number, "billion" can be abbreviated as b , bil or bn . In standard form, it is written as 1 × 10 . The metric prefix giga indicates 1,000,000,000 times the base unit. Its symbol is G . One billion years may be called an eon in astronomy or geology. Previously in British English (but not in American English ),

160-525: The Lasker Foundation . In 1978, Tjian found the first protein of a virus which can regulate gene expression in mammalian cells, the SV40 large T antigen . He showed that "activator" proteins , which previously had been shown to play crucial roles in regulating gene expression in simple organisms, also exist in higher organisms. He and his colleagues further discovered several gene-regulatory proteins . Tjian

180-516: The 1969 reform act for charitable institutions due to legal filings by Hughes to change its operational status, with his objections going directly to the White House. The institute moved to Coconut Grove, Florida , in the mid-1970s and then to Bethesda, Maryland , in 1976. In 1993, the institute moved to its headquarters in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was not until after Hughes's death in 1976 that

200-690: The HHMI Early Career Scientist Competition. In 2014, the institute created a new round of its primary award competition, for a total of $ 150 million in award money from 2015 to 2012. The institute is expanding the Ashburn campus in 2019. In 2016, the HHMI Trustees selected Erin K. O'Shea , a previous Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at the institute, the new president of HHMI. In 2022, HHMI began to require immediate open access to publications from its research. In 2023, HHMI

220-571: The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which in turn owned all the stock of the Hughes Aircraft Company. In 1969, Representative Wright Patman "complained that the Hughes foundation was a tax‐evasion device," noting that the institute spent only $ 5.7 million for its operations between 1954 and 1961, a period during which Hughes Aircraft accumulated $ 76.9 million in profits. By 1975, it had also avoided certain stipulations of

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240-597: The early days it was generally viewed as a tax haven for Hughes's huge personal fortune. Hughes was HHMI's sole trustee and he transferred his stock of Hughes Aircraft to the institute, in effect turning the large defense contractor into a tax-exempt charity. For many years the Institute grappled with maintaining its non-profit status; the Internal Revenue Service challenged its "charitable" status which made it tax exempt. Partly in response to such claims, starting in

260-561: The end of 2016. Tjian was born in Hong Kong in 1949. His father Tjian Tze-Ning (Qian Zining; 錢子寧), a native of Shaoxing , Zhejiang , was a famous capitalist in Shanghai and pioneer of China's modern paper industry . In April 1949, Tjian's family and business all moved to Hong Kong; in 1950 moved to São Paulo , Brazil ; and later settled in New Jersey , the United States. Tjian received

280-689: The institute to grow dramatically. HHMI completed the building of a new research campus in Ashburn, Virginia called Janelia Research Campus in October 2006. It is modeled after AT&T's Bell Labs and the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology . With a main laboratory building nearly 1,000 feet (300 m) long, it contains 760,000 square feet (71,000 m) of enclosed space, used primarily for research. The campus also features apartments for visiting researchers. In 2007, HHMI and

300-428: The institute's profile increased from an annual budget of $ 4 million in 1975 to $ 15 million in 1978 and prior to Hughes Aircraft sale the number had peaked to $ 200 million per year. At the time of the sale Hughes Aircraft employed 75,000 people and vast amounts of money from the approximate annual revenue of $ 6 billion were put into Hughes Aircraft internal research and development rather than the medical institute. Most of

320-452: The late 1950s it began funding 47 investigators doing research at eight different institutions; however, it remained a modest enterprise for several decades. The institute was initially located in Miami, Florida , in 1953. Hughes's internist, Verne Mason , who treated Hughes after his 1946 plane crash, was chairman of the institute's medical advisory committee. By 1975, Hughes was sole trustee of

340-552: The money for the medical institute came from the operations at Ground System Group responsible for providing Air Defense Systems to NATO , Pacific Rim , and the USA . In this period it focused its mission on genetics , immunology , and molecular biology . Since Hughes died without a will as the sole trustee of the HHMI, the institute was involved in lengthy court proceedings to determine whether it would benefit from Hughes's fortune. In April 1984,

360-575: The publisher Elsevier announced they have established an agreement to make author manuscripts of HHMI research articles published in Elsevier and Cell Press journals publicly available six months following final publication. The agreement takes effect for articles published after September 1, 2007. In 2008, the Trustees of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute selected Robert Tjian as the new president of HHMI. In 2009, HHMI awarded fifty researchers, as part of

380-526: The word "billion" referred exclusively to a million millions (1,000,000,000,000). However, this is not common anymore, and the word has been used to mean one thousand million (1,000,000,000) for several decades. The term milliard could also be used to refer to 1,000,000,000; whereas "milliard" is rarely used in English, variations on this name often appear in other languages . In the Indian numbering system , it

400-426: Was sued by Dr. Vivian Cheung for disability discrimination. As of 2017 the Howard Hughes Medical Institute had assets of $ 22,588,928,000. Revenue and support as of 2017: $ 2,382,777,000 Expenses as of 2017: $ 936,514,000 1000000000 (number) This is an accepted version of this page 1,000,000,000 (one billion , short scale ; one thousand million or one milliard, one yard, long scale )

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