Bioinformatics faculty member Kathrin Plath was among the first cohort of 84 scientists selected as Faculty Scholars by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the Simons Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Faculty Scholars are “early-career scientists who have great potential to make unique contributions to their field.” 

To be chosen as an HHMI Faculty Scholar, early-career investigators must have between four and 10  years of experience as faculty members and must have shown potential for significant research productivity and originality, as judged by their doctoral and postdoctoral work, results from their independent research program, and their future research plans. Through this program, the philanthropies will spend about $83 million over five years to support the first cohort of scientists selected to receive grants.

Kathrin Plath, Professor of Biological Chemistry, earned her doctorate degree in cell biology from Harvard Medical School and the Humboldt University Berlin, Germany, and did her post-doctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco, where she worked on the X-inactivation process in female mammalian cells. In 2003, Dr. Plath moved to the Whitehead Institute at MIT to gain expertise in stem cell biology, and she joined UCLA’s Biological Chemistry Department in March 2006. Her lab focuses on epigenetic changes that occur during differentiation of pluripotent cells or during reprogramming to pluripotency. Dr. Plath serves as on the board of directors of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, and has received NIH’s New Innovator Award.

Congratulations Dr. Plath!