Professor Nick Hastie

IGMM Director of Academic Development

Biography

Background

Professor Nick Hastie is Director of Academic Development at the MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine (IGMM) at the University of Edinburgh.  He was Director of the MRC Human Genetics Unit until 2015 and was also the inaugural Director of the IGMM from 2007-2016.  Nick Hastie attended Colwyn Bay Grammar School in North Wales and he went on to receive an honours degree in Medical Microbiology at Liverpool University.  Following that, he carried out his PhD work on Influenza Replication at Cambridge University.  Since then, he has worked in many areas including gene expression, genome organisation (including telomeres) and protein evolution.  He has had a long-term interest in human developmental genetics, concentrating on the childhood kidney cancer, Wilms’ tumour.  His most recent work has uncovered mechanisms underlying key developmental switches during kidney and cardiovascular development.  His group has also identified visceral fat progenitors and their developmental origins.  Over the past few years Professor Hastie has also become heavily engaged in a major population genetics project to identify genetic risk factors for common disease.  Nick Hastie was an International Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.  He is Chairperson of a number of Scientific Advisory Boards, including (until 2010) that for the Sanger Institute and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics.  Professor Hastie has been a member of the MRC and CRUK Strategy Development Committees and the Wellcome Trust Interest Group.  He also sat on the ERC Advanced Panel for Genomics, Genetics and Systems Biology.    Nick was European Editor of Genes & Development for a decade and currently sits on the Advisory Boards of Genes & Development and Disease and Developmental Mechanisms.  Professor Hastie is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Member of EMBO.  He was awarded a CBE for Services to Science in 2006 and the Medal of the Genetics Society of the UK in 2008. 

Qualifications

Academic Qualifications 

  • Bachelor

    • 1969, Bachelor of Science, 2:1, University of Liverpool
  • Doctorate
    • 1973, Doctor of Philosophy, PhD, University of Cambridge

Professional Qualifications 

  • 2006 Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Edinburgh
  • 2014 Honorary Doctor of Medicine, University of Sheffield
  • 2014 Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Dundee

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