Valentina Greco, PhD, Carolyn Walch Slayman Professor of Genetics at Yale School of Medicine, is one of 26 scientists from 19 institutions who have just been named Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigators, one of the highest honors in biomedical science.
With this status, Greco and the other new investigators will each receive 11 million dollars over a seven-year period to conduct research that, in the words of HHMI, will “push[ the boundaries of science,” and “radically changes our understanding of how biology works.”
HHMI’s chief scientific officer, Leslie Vosshall, PhD, says the institute invests in “people, not projects,” and “provides investigators with the time and resources they need to go where their science leads.”
Greco’s scientific focus is on the skin. Among the questions she investigates are how cell behaviors are an expression of the architecture of the tissue in which the cells are embedded, and why skin cancer is relatively rare even though mutations are frequent in the skin.
Greco, a native of Palermo, Italy, has received numerous awards over her career, including a Faculty Scholars award in 2016 given to early-career investigators by HHMI, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Simons Foundation. She is renowned as an advocate for women in science and as a dedicated mentor to junior scientists.
More than 250 of the nation’s leading scientists are HHMI Investigators, including — with the addition of Greco — eight from Yale. Investigator status is renewable indefinitely based on periodic scientific reviews.