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Stowers Institute Names New President of its Graduate School

The Stowers Institute for Medical Research named its third president of its graduate school. Photo courtesy of the Stowers Institute

Posted March 27, 2024

The Graduate School of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research has named its third president, beginning their new role later this year.

Matt Gibson, who served as dean of the graduate school since 2019, will take on the role of president effective July 1, 2024, according to a release. Gibson joined Stowers in 2006.

Matt Gibson will be the president of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research graduate school effective July 1, 2024. Photo courtesy of the Stowers Institute.

“When I first came to the Stowers Institute, we did not have a graduate school,” Gibson said in the release. “With the founding and growth of our Ph.D. program, we are now an institution dedicated to creating not only exceptional science and but also exceptional scientists. In the work they do here and in their careers beyond our labs, each of our predoctoral researchers represent the pursuit of our founders’ vision of excellence in basic biological science for the betterment of all.”

Gibson succeeds the current president Betty M. Drees. Drees became president of the graduate school in 2018 and announced her retirement last October.

“Dr. Gibson is a skilled and thoughtful leader who is dedicated to excellence in graduate science education, as well as the learning experience at the school,” Drees said in the release.

The institute’s graduate school, located in Kansas City, Mo., has 48 predoctoral researchers enrolled in its doctoral program alongside 31 faculty members comprised of investigators and scientists. It welcomed its first class of students in 2012 and received its accreditation as an institution of higher education by the U.S. Department of Education in 2021.

In addition to his service as the dean of the graduate school, Gibson also serves as an investigator at Stowers. Gibson’s lab investigates evolutionarily ancient mechanisms of development and regeneration in sea biology.

Gibson received his undergraduate degree in biology from Yale University in 1994 and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in Seattle in 2001.