Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Related Category: Private Foundations

(HHMI), nonprofit medical research organization founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes and largly funded from proceeds of the 1984–85 sale of Hughes Aircraft. Headquartered in Chevy Chase, Md., it is one of the world's largest and wealthiest philanthropies. HHMI supports the research of several hundred “investigators,” largely geneticists and biologists, at universities, hospitals, and laboratories throughout the United States; it also has an international program. HHMI also provides funds for labs and equipment, and in all grants about $1 million per researcher. In 2006 HHMI opened a new scientific research campus, Janelia Farm, at Ashburn, Va. There groups of researchers—biologists, geneticists, computer scientists, engineers, physicists, and others—undertake basic biomedical research that requires input from a variety of areas as well as long-term effort or that is outside the scope of other funders.