MCB faculty Venkatesh Murthy has been appointed the new Faculty Director of the Harvard Center of Biological Imaging (HCBI), following Jeff Lichtman being named Dean of Science for FAS. Since 2010, HCBI has provided access to cutting edge microscopes for Harvard life sciences researchers and the Greater Boston community. The Faculty Director of HCBI makes key decisions for determining the direction of the facility.
“Jeff’s leadership, support, and planning over the past 15 years have established the HCBI as one of the world’s leading light microscopy cores,” says Senior Research Scientist and Lecturer Douglas Richardson, who oversees the day-to-day operations of HCBI. “Without Jeff’s vision and continued mentorship, the HCBI would not exist as it does today: a central component of Harvard’s mission of teaching and research.”
Richardson adds, “I’m very excited that Venki will become the next HCBI faculty director as his background in engineering, his lab’s extensive use of imaging across scales, and his extensive knowledge of applying AI to image data analysis are perfectly suited to the current challenges facing the HCBI.”
In addition to being MCB faculty, Murthy is also Director of the Center for Brain Science. Richardson says that Murthy’s leadership roles across FAS will help raise HCBI’s visibility as a facility that researchers can use.
“I am delighted to take on this role at HCBI, which was established through Jeff Lichtman’s pioneering vision,” says Murthy. “It is impossible to fill Jeff’s shoes, but my job will be made easy by Doug Richardson and his team. They run this center so well that it has become a shining model at Harvard for how a shared facility can enable and amplify the research done by scientific groups throughout our community.”
