Peter Baumann named Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career...( Stowers Institute Associate Investig...)

Stowers Institute Associate Investigator Peter Baumann, Ph.D., has been named an Early Career Scientist with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). HHMI appointments are among the most competitive and highly sought distinctions in biomedical research.

Dr. Baumann and his team will continue to work in laboratories at the Stowers Institute's Kansas City campus. In addition to his generous Stowers funding, Dr. Baumann will receive substantial annual support from HHMI, allowing him to expand his program by adding new members to the research team and taking on additional projects.

Dr. Baumann was selected from among more than 2,000 candidates. On September 1, 2009, his appointment begins, and he becomes the second Stowers laboratory leader to hold a HHMI position after coming to Kansas City. Olivier Pourqui, Ph.D., Investigator, was appointed in 2005, three years after joining the Stowers Institute. Joan Conaway, Ph.D., and Jerry Workman, Ph.D., held HHMI appointments prior to joining the Stowers Institute in 2001 and 2003, respectively.

A native of Ulm, Germany, Dr. Baumann joined the Institute in 2002 after completing an HHMI postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Thomas R. Cech, Ph.D., at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, Clare Hall (U.K.); a Master's degree at the Wellcome/CRC Institute, University of Cambridge (U.K.); and his Bachelor's degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Cambridge (U.K.). Dr. Baumann received a highly competitive Pew Scholar Award in the Biomedical Sciences in 2003 and a Basil O'Connor Award from the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation in 2004.

Since joining the Institute, Dr. Baumann and his research team have conducted research to determine how cells maintain the ends of their chromosomes, called telomeres. Telomeres shorten as we get older, and mutations that result in accele
'/>"/>