“This excellent concept of providing the resources to spend a month at another Institution is scientifically invigorating, renews friendships and creates a path for new learning.” So says Walter Gehring (University of Basel) who spent four weeks last summer at the Karolinska Institutet working with Rudolf Riger, Lars Terenius and other colleagues on the continuation of a project to look at the question of how a Hox transcription factor finds its target genes among 18,000 genes in a living Drosophila cell. He is just one of the 47 Vallee Visiting Professors (VVPs) who have been appointed since 1997.

The Vallee Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of six new Vallee Visiting Professors to this program which pairs outstanding scientists with premier biomedical research institutes worldwide in an informal arrangement that promotes intellectual exchanges and fosters new partnerships:

Top row:

• Bonnie Bassler (Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, HHMI Investigator)
• Ivan Dikic (Director of the Institute for Biochemistry and the Scientific Director of the Buchman Institute for Molecular Life Sciences, Goethe University, Frankfurt)
• Christopher Dobson (Professor of Chemical and Structural Biology, University of Cambridge, Master of St John’s College, University of Cambridge)

Bottom row:

• Tyler Jacks (Director, David Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. HHMI Investigator)
• Thomas Shenk (James A. Elkins Professor of Life Sciences, Princeton University)
• Andreas Strasser (Professor, Head of the Molecular Genetics of Cancer Division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, University of Melbourne)

VVPs may choose a host institute anywhere in the world at which to spend a sabbatical leave of up to one month. These short-term visits have proven to be a great success for planning research, conducting experiments, and establishing meaningful relationships, nationally and internationally. Through dialogue between exceptional biomedical scientists, the Vallee Foundation actively contributes to the advancement of medical education and research related to human health.