RELATED STORY: Gregory Hannon: Tools for Tough Questions

Gregory Hannon is Senior Group Leader of the CRUK Cambridge Institute and Professor of Molecular Cancer Biology and a Wellcome Trust Investigator at the University of Cambridge. He is a former Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, an Associate Core Member and Director of Cancer Genomics at the New York Genome Center, and an Adjunct Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He obtained a B.A. in biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University and a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the same institution. His work focuses on the roles of small RNAs, the biology of cancer cells, and the mammalian genome as revealed through next-generation sequencing. Hannon received the 2007 National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology and the 2007 Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in May 2012.