Research Core Facilities

Neil Hunter, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has been elected as a Fellow of The Royal Society in London.

This prestigious appointment, announced May 20, was offered to only 70 scientists across the world.

“I’m thrilled and surprised,” said Hunter. “The acknowledgment means a great deal to me, because it’s an election by some of the best scientists in the world.”

The single-celled parasite Entamoeba histolytica infects 50 million people each year, killing nearly 70,000. Usually, this wily, shape-shifting amoeba causes nothing worse than diarrhea. But sometimes it triggers severe, even fatal disease by chewing ulcers in the colon, liquefying parts of the liver and invading the brain and lungs.