HHMI Investigators in Texas

Which city in Texas has the highest concentration of talent in academic biomedical research? There is probably no definitive way to answer this question, but one good "quick and dirty" method would be to compile a list of Texas-based Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigators. Why? Because HHMI Investigators typically constitute a large portion of the 'superstar' biomedical researchers at any given institution. Below is a list compiled from data I obtained from the HHMI website in October 2013:

It turns out Dallas leads the list by a long shot, due solely to UT Southwestern Medical Center. Having been a UT Southwestern employee for the past seven years I knew it had a strong research program, but I was still surprised to see it dominate the local competition to the degree that it does in this particular metric (for what it's worth UT Southwestern also has five Nobel laureates among its faculty - four active, one emeritus).

This made me curious: how does UT Southwestern rank in the number of HHMI investigators nationally? Pretty well, it turns out:

UT Southwestern ties for no. 8 with Columbia and Johns Hopkins. Not bad at all.

And how does Texas rank as a state? See below:

Fourth place behind CA, MA, and NY. Again, not bad.

Is there a relationship between a state's prowess in basic biomedical research and the robustness of its local biomedical industry? Presumably, although I would guess the latter isn't necessarily an inevitable outcome of the former. Still, I can't help but be excited about these numbers and what they suggest about the potential of Texas's, and particularly Dallas's, biomedical industry.

- Isamu Hartman, PhD

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