Skip to content
After three years off, the Ragon-MIT course HST.434 returned this January to provide 24 students a once in a lifetime learning experience.
Nick Kolev | Ragon Institute
Axolotls can regrow whole body parts, from tails and limbs to even parts of their brain and spine, making them fascinating research subjects, and their unique looks have been captured in art and culture in their native Mexico and beyond. Recently, Peter Reddien’s lab has added axolotls to their list of regenerative specimens with a research project led by graduate student Conor McMann.
Endowed chairs are generally created through philanthropic gifts from individual donors, organizations, or groups of donors honoring a specific person. The chairs — of which the Institute currently has five — provide steady, predictable funding to support investigations in Members’ labs, including: Whitehead Institute Member Iain Cheeseman, who — in addition to being a professor of biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) — holds the Margaret and Herman Sokol Chair in Biomedical Research; Yukiko Yamashita — Whitehead Institute Member, professor of biology at MIT, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator — the inaugural incumbent of the Susan Lindquist Chair for Women in Science; Jonathan Weissman — Professor of Biology and Whitehead Institute Core Member and HHMI Investigator — is the inaugural holder of the Landon T. Clay Professor of Biology Chair. In 2020, Mary Gehring — Professor of Biology, Graduate Officer, and Core Member of the whitehead Institute Core Member and David Baltimore Chair in Biomedical Research, Whitehead Institute was named the inaugural holder of the Clay Career Development Chair. In 2023, Gehring was succeeded by Sebastian Lourido, associate professor of Biology and Core Member of the Whitehead Institute.
