Molecular geneticist Professor Brandon Wainwright has been appointed director of the University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB).

He takes over from founding director Professor John Mattick, who announced last year that he was stepping down as director to concentrate on his internationally renowned work on regulatory RNA.

Wainwright has been acting director of the IMB since the start of last year, before which he was deputy director of research.

Wainwright was born in Melbourne and educated at the University of Adelaide. He has won several awards, including the ASBMB's Boehringer Mannheim Medal in 1991 and the AAS's Gottschalk Medal in 1998. He sits on the board of the Health and Medical Research Council of Queensland.

He is best known for the co-discovery of Patched, the gene responsible for both the inherited and sporadic forms of basal cell carcinoma. His team also concentrates on analysis of the single-gene disorder cystic fibrosis.