ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Fotis Kafatos, a molecular biologist who had a distinguished academic career in both the United States and Europe and became the founding president of the European Research Council, has died. He was 77.

His family announced his death "after a long illness" on Saturday.

Born in Crete in 1940, Kafatos was known for his research on malaria and for sequencing the genome of the mosquito that transmits the disease.

He was a professor at Harvard University during 1969-1994 and at Imperial College in London since 2005. He also had been an adjunct professor at the Harvard School of Public Health since 2007.

Kafatos considered the 2007 founding of the European Research Council to promote projects driven by researchers as his crowning achievement. He stepped down as founding president in 2010.