Research Enterprise Newsletter - July 2008: Faculty News
Pietenpol appointed to National Cancer Advisory Board
President George Bush has appointed Jennifer Pietenpol, Ph.D., director of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, to the National Cancer Advisory Board. Pietenpol will serve a six-year term through March 9, 2014. She is one of eight members named by the president and will serve on the Science committee. The National Cancer Advisory Board advises the secretary of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services and the director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) on activities of the NCI, including reviewing and recommending support grants and cooperative agreements, following technical and scientific peer review.
MSTP adds leaders to ranks
Vanderbilt's Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) has welcomed two new leaders into its ranks. Larry Swift, Ph.D., professor of Pathology, will serve as a new associate director of the MSTP, and James Bills, Ed.D., assistant professor of Medical Education and Administration, has been named as a new assistant director. Swift and Bills will join the MSTP leadership team - which currently includes Director Terry Dermody, M.D., Associate Director Susan Wente, Ph.D., and Assistant Director Michelle Grundy, Ph.D. - in their efforts to recruit and train students pursuing the dual M.D./Ph.D. degree.
Wasserman wins NIH MERIT award
David H. Wasserman, Ph.D., Professor and Ron Santo Chair in Diabetes Research and Director, Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Center, has received a MERIT Award from the NIH. The Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) Award program provides long-term support to investigators with impressive records of scientific achievement in research areas of special importance or promise. Less than 5 percent of NIH-funded investigators are selected to receive MERIT Awards.
Gitlin forms Division of Development Medicine & Cognition; Reimschisel to lead
Jonathan Gitlin, M.D., chair of Pediatrics and physician-in-chief for the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt, has announced the formation of the Division of Developmental Medicine and Cognition. The new division will seek to reach new heights in clinical service to families of children with developmental disabilities as well as bring Children's Hospital to the forefront in research into developmental disabilities and how to treat or prevent them. Gitlin has selected Tyler Reimschisel, M.D., to be the division's first director. Reimschisel is the former assistant professor of Pediatrics, Neurology and Genetics and director of the Medical Genetics Residency Program at Washington University School of Medicine.
Wallace to lead Vanderbilt Brain Institute
Mark Wallace, Ph.D., associate professor of Hearing and Speech Sciences and Psychology at Vanderbilt University, has been named director of the Vanderbilt Brain Institute. Wallace succeeds Elaine Sanders-Bush, Ph.D., professor of Pharmacology and Psychiatry and director of the Neuroscience Graduate Program at Vanderbilt Medical Center. The Brain Institute was established in 2001 to "foster and facilitate" neuroscience research, training and public outreach at Vanderbilt.
Brash presents plenary lecture at Japanese biochemistry conference
Alan R. Brash, Ph.D., Professor of Pharmacology, presented the plenary lecture, titled "Lipoxygenases and epidermal barrier function," at the 50th anniversary meeting of the Japanese Conference on the Biochemistry of Lipids, held in Tokushima, Japan, on June 5-6, 2008. Dr. Brash described how the discovery about 20 years ago of lipoxygenase enzymes in marine invertebrates that synthesize the mirror image of the typical fatty acid lipoxygenase product eventually led to the finding of a similar enzyme in human skin, now linked to the pathogenesis of ichthyosis, a proliferative skin disease.
