Former Tauranga Girls' College student Dr Diane Hayward, head of oncology at Johns Hopkins University Maryland, sold her mother's house to The Elms Trust this week.

It's a house her mother built at 29 Mission Street next door to the home Diane grew up in on the corner of Mission and Chapel Streets.

Diane Hayward sold her mother's home to The Elms Trust.

Her mother was uncomfortable in the original home after her father died, says Diane. So she built a new house right next door.

'I sold it to The Elms Trust on very favourable terms because it was something my mother always expected would happen, and something that I thought she would like – and because I have affection for Tauranga.”

Diane is a cancer researcher with an international reputation. After leaving TGC she obtained a PhD in biochemistry from Otago University, before heading overseas.

She completed two post doctorates in Europe – in biophysics at the Institute pour la Recherche Scientifique sur le Cancer in Villejuif, France, and a post doctorate in Molekular Genetiks at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. In the US, she did a two- year post-doctoral at the University of Chicago Illinois.

She joined Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1976. Johns Hopkins is a not-for-profit private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, and is named after its benefactor, philanthropist Johns Hopkins.

Diane currently holds the position of professor and director of the Viral Oncology Programme at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at John Hopkins. Research interests include epstein-bach virus and kaposi sarcoma-associated herpes virus, viral latency and tumorigenesis, mechanisms of virus induced proliferation, and herpes virus proteomics. Her research is well recognised in the cancer field also, receiving the merit award from the National Cancer Institute, from 1988 to 1995 and more recently from 2002 to 2011.

She attributes her success to the education she received in New Zealand, at Tauranga and Otago.

'I went to the local school then Otago. Then I left to go overseas. When you go to a place like the US that you know very little about, you wonder whether you will cut it because you come from a very little town.

Within days she realised the education provided in New Zealand at that time made her the equal of the scientists and researchers she met.

'Chicago is pretty up there, and at Hopkins you have got the best people in the room; brilliant, caring, dedicated people – and yet I never felt that I was in any way at a loss or disadvantaged because of where I was from.

'I don't feel the least bit that I lack in any way because of where I am from, and I think that is pretty special.”

She and her family live in Baltimore, and they holiday in Mount Maunganui.

'We come back for family and relaxation,” says Diane. 'As you get older, going back to where you started out is comfortable.”

She says Tauranga is beautiful and she has a great affection for it, speaking of the daily changing beach scenery at the Mount.

'People who live here every day of their lives, it is so much part of the background they don't even notice.”

The Elms Trust may in future use the property as The Elms Visitors Centre says trust chairman Ian Cross.