B. Wayne Hughes, founder in 1995 of the nonprofit Hughes Medical Institute for Medical Research in Minnesota, has been elected to the USC board of trustees.

In announcing Hughes' election, USC President Steven B. Sample said: "Wayne Hughes offers everything that we look for in a USC trustee. He is a noted civic leader and a person with a deep concern for this university and its mission. Wayne has remained an energetic and dedicated alumnus of USC. We look forward to his leadership as a trustee."

The Hughes Institute is a nonprofit center dedicated to the discovery and development of drugs to treat cancer, Hodgkin's disease, AIDS and other illnesses.

It is directed by Fatih M. Uckun, who was formerly a professor of pediatrics, therapeutic radiology, pharmacology and bone marrow transplantation at the University of Minnesota. The institute has approximately 200 employees, including more than 100 scientists and physicians, and contains more than 150,000 square feet of state-of-the-art laboratories.

Recent research includes novel treatments for cancer, AIDS and allergies.

"This is my passion in life," said Hughes in a recent newspaper interview. "A child dies of leukemia every 15 minutes. We have one new front-line drug for leukemia (B43-PAP) that is in phase three trials in 120 hospitals across the United States. It is the first new drug in 20 years for pediatric leukemia."

Hughes is founder, chair and CEO of Public Storage Inc. in Glendale, a real-estate investment trust that owns and operates more than a thousand self-storage facilities in 37 states with 65 million square feet of storage space and more than half a million tenants. It is the largest mini-warehouse company in the United States.

An Oklahoma native, Hughes earned his bachelor's degree in business from USC's Marshall School of Business in 1957. He is a Presidential Associate and a member of the USC Scholarship Club.

His children, Tamara Lyn and Bradley Wayne Jr., are also graduates of USC.