John E. Sulston was the founding Director of the Sanger Institute. Sulston was instrumental in the choice of the Hinxton site for the Institute and remained there as Director until the announcement of the completion of the draft human genome in 2000. Sulston graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1963 and completed his PhD on the chemical synthesis of DNA in 1966. He shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Robert Horvitz and Sydney Brenner, two years after standing down as Director of the Institute.