Cell Biology, Pharmacology, Microbiology and Physiology and around 20 researchers. From 1966 to 1969, four IGC leaders passed away: Delfim Santos (Pedagogical Innovation), António Gião (Scientific Calculation), Flávio Resende (Biology) and Luís Quartin Graça (Agricultural Economy). In 1968 Luís Archer, jesuit priest and biologist, widely regarded as the ‘father' of molecular genetics in Portugal, returns to Portugal to set up the Molecular Genetics Laboratory at the IGC, in the Department of Cell Biology. The year after, in 1969, it was set up the Estudos Avançados de Oeiras (Oeiras Advanced Studies) to provide workshops, summer schools and international seminars to scientists. In 1984, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Board of Trustees decides that IGC will be a research centre exclusively dedicated to research and pos-graduated training in biology. In 1989, the Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica (ITQB) and the Instituto de Biologia Experimental e Tecnológica (iBET) were created and hosted in the IGC campus. With IGC, they will later form the Oeiras Campus. António Coutinho, immunologist and Head of the Immunobiology Unit in Institut Pasteur, is appointed the Director of the Oeiras Advanced Studies in 1991. In 1993 Coutinho starts the Gulbenkian PhD Programme in Biology and Medicine (PGDBM), a pioneering programme in Portugal and one of the first of this kind in the world. In 1998, António Coutinho is designated Director of the IGC and starts a new phase of the institute as a ‘host institution' with the mission of identifying, educating and incubating new research leaders, providing access to facilities, and financial and intellectual autonomy to pursue research projects. The Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme at the IGC is established in 2006 and the research groups of the newly formed Champalimaud Foundation are hosted at the IGC to carry out research in systems neuroscience until 2011, when they move to the Champalimaud Foundation’s new building in Lisbon. In 2008, the IGC participates for the first time in the music festival NOS Alive under a partnership established between “Everything is New”, promoter of NOS Alive, and the IGC to support fellowships for young researchers. In 2010 and 2011, the IGC was ranked amongst the '10 Best Places for Post-docs' outside the USA, by The Scientist. Jonathan Howard, immunologist and Professor of Genetics at the University of Cologne, is appointed Director of the IGC in 2012, succeeding António Coutinho. Since February 2018, Mónica Bettencourt Dias is the new Director of the IGC, succeeding