Wade Harper has been named Chair of the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School, effective Nov. 3, 2014. He succeeds Joan Brugge who will be stepping down to co-direct the Harvard Ludwig Center.

Wade Harper is the Bert and Natalie Vallee Professor of Molecular Pathology. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1984. In 1988, Harper joined the Department of Biochemistry at Baylor College of Medicine and was recruited to the HMS Department of Pathology in 2003. He then moved to the Department of Cell Biology in 2011.

Joan Brugge, the Louise Foote Pfeiffer Professor of Cell Biology, has been a member of the HMS faculty since 1997 and chaired the Department of Cell Biology for the past 10 years.

For more details, please see HMS news coverage.