Director, Michael Smith Laboratories
Professor, Department of Medical Genetics
University of British Columbia

Dr. Hieter received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Johns Hopkins University in 1981 (with Phil Leder, human antibody genes).  He trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University (with Ron Davis, yeast centromeres) and then returned to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, as a faculty member in 1985, and was promoted to Full Professor in 1994.  In 1997, he joined the University of British Columbia as a Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics and as Associate Director of the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics.  He was appointed Director of the Michael Smith Laboratories (formerly the Biotechnology Laboratory) on January 1, 2001.

Dr. Hieter was the recipient of the Council of Graduate Schools/University Microfilms International Dissertation Prize in 1981. He was a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences from 1986 to 1990, and was recipient of an American Cancer Society Faculty Research Award in 1991, and a Senior Scientist Award from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research in 2000.  Dr. Hieter was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (1998), and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2005).  In 2005, he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada.  In 2006, Dr. Hieter was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Research Scholar.

In 1994, Dr. Hieter was elected to the Board of Directors of the Genetics Society of America, and served from 1994 to 1997.  He has served on the Genome Research Review Council (NIH) from 1997 to 2001, on the Institute Advisory Board of the Institute of Genetics (CIHR) from 2001 to 2005, and on the editorial boards of Chromosoma, Human Molecular Genetics, and Genome Research. Dr. Hieter was a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Human Genome Research Institute (NIH) from 2001 to 2006, and served as Chair from 2004 to 2006.  Dr. Hieter is currently chair of the Planning and Priorities Committee "Integrating the Physical and Applied Sciences into Biomedical Research" for the Institute of Genetics (CIHR), and serves on the advisory boards of SGD (Saccharomyces Genome Database), the NRC/NIH Resource Center for Comprehensive Biology (University of Washington), and Genome BC.

Dr Hieter is recognized for his work on structural and regulatory proteins that ensure faithful segregation of chromosomes during cell division.  His work has also demonstrated and advocated the value of yeast and other model experimental organisms for understanding mechanisms of human disease.