Dr. Kevin Moses Named Vice President of Science Programs at The Kavli Foundation
November 13, 2018
The Kavli Foundation has announced the appointment of Dr. Kevin Moses as Vice President of Science Programs. He will assume his new role on December 1.
Dr. Moses will oversee The Kavli Foundation’s flagship programs in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience, neuroscience and theoretical physics, including the 20 Kavli Institutes around the world, the Kavli science meetings program and summer schools, as well as the Foundation’s partnerships with national science agencies, scientific societies and other philanthropies. Building on The Kavli Foundation’s strong history with the U.S. BRAIN Initiative and other funding initiatives, he will also develop and implement fundamental science and technology projects that are consistent with the Foundation’s mission to support scientists and their work.
A developmental biologist, Dr. Moses has more than a dozen years of leadership experience at several of the world’s top philanthropic institutions, all focused on science. These institutions include the Wellcome Trust, the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. In his current role as Science Officer at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, he has helped to establish its programs, partnerships and grant-making initiatives during its formative phase.
“Kevin brings a wealth of experience and accomplishments in science, academia and philanthropy,” said Robert Conn, President and CEO of The Kavli Foundation. “Our challenge as The Kavli Foundation approaches its 20th anniversary is to ensure that we remain impactful in our science philanthropy. I’m fully confident that with Kevin’s strong strategy-setting and leadership experience, and the talented team we have in place, we are up to that challenge.”
Kavli Q&A: Meet Kevin Moses, Vice President of Science Programs at The Kavli Foundation
The Kavli Foundation sat down with Dr. Moses to learn more about how his career has evolved and what he thinks philanthropies can do to fuel breakthrough science. Read the interview
Prior to joining the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Dr. Moses spent five years at the Wellcome Trust, the United Kingdom’s largest charitable foundation. He led Wellcome’s Science Division, overseeing its annual science funding portfolio, along with 13 research institutes and hundreds of principal investigators in the U.K., Africa, India and Southeast Asia.
Dr. Moses moved into science philanthropy from academia in 2005 to help launch Janelia, a research campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute dedicated to understanding the brain, where he served as Associate Director for Science and Training and then as Chief Academic Officer. His wide-ranging responsibilities at Janelia encompassed developing its scientific direction, recruiting faculty, fostering collaboration and developing its graduate programs.
“The Kavli Foundation has consistently found ways to help the most powerful scientific ideas thrive,” said Dr. Moses. “I’m looking forward to continuing that tradition.”
Dr. Moses earned his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Cambridge, England in 1986, after which he did a post-doctoral fellowship in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining HHMI/Janelia in 2005, he was an Assistant, then Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California (1991-1997) and of Cell Biology at Emory University (1998-2005). His research focused on the development of the visual system in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, a widely used model organism in the life sciences.