New Members Appointed to NAGMS Council HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala has appointed five new members to the National Advisory General Medical Sciences Council. They are George C. Hill, Ph.D., of Meharry Medical College; Eaton E. Lattman, Ph.D., of The Johns Hopkins University; Douglas A. Lauffenburger, Ph.D., of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Debra A. Schwinn, M.D., of Duke University Medical Center; and Susan S. Taylor, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Diego. The council, which meets three times a year, is composed of leaders in the biological and medical sciences, education, health care and public affairs. Its members, who are appointed for four-year terms, review applications for research and research training grants that have been assigned to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The members make recommendations to the secretary of Health and Human Services, to the director of the National Institutes of Health and to the director of NIGMS on policy matters, areas of research importance and personnel needs in fields of science related to NIGMS' programs. Dr. Hill is a professor in the department of microbiology in the School of Medicine at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., where he also serves as vice president for sponsored research and director of international health programs. His main research interest is the molecular biology and biochemistry of the organism that causes African sleeping sickness. Dr. Hill was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1998 and is a former Fulbright fellow to the University of Nairobi, Kenya. He earned a B.A. in biology from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in Camden, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from New York University in New York City. Dr. Lattman is professor and chair of the department of biophysics at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. He has served as editor in chief of Proteins: Structure, Function, and Genetics since 1991. He earned a B.A. in chemistry and physics from Harvard College in Cambridge, Mass., and a Ph.D. in biophysics from The Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Lattman's research interests include studies of protein structure and the design of anti-sickling agents. Dr. Lauffenburger is professor of bioengineering and chemical engineering, co-director of the division of bioengineering and environmental health and director of the biotechnology process engineering center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. He is a founding fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and a former president of the Biomedical Engineering Society. He was awarded the 1999 Amgen Award in Biochemical Engineering from the Engineering Foundation for his molecular and cellular bioengineering research, which includes studies of cell signaling, cell movement and cell growth. Dr. Lauffenburger earned a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Dr. Schwinn is a professor in the departments of anesthesiology, pharmacology/cancer biology and surgery at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. She also serves as director of the molecular pharmacology laboratory in the department of anesthesiology. She has served as associate editor of two journals, Anesthesiology and Frontiers in Bioscience. Dr. Schwinn earned a B.A. in chemistry from The College of Wooster in Ohio and an M.D. from Stanford University School of Medicine in California. She received residency training in the department of anesthesiology at Pennsylvania Hospital, a component of the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia and did clinical and research fellowships at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Schwinn's research ranges from clinical intervention trials in the perioperative period to basic research on the role of adrenaline-activated receptors in health and disease. Dr. Taylor is a professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla, where she also serves as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1996 and to the Institute of Medicine in 1997. She is also a past president of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Dr. Taylor earned a B.A. in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a Ph.D. in physiological chemistry from The Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on the activities of a common cell-signaling molecule called cAMP-dependent protein kinase. A component of NIH, one of the Public Health Service agencies within HHS, NIGMS funds research and research training in the basic biomedical sciences. This support enables scientists at universities, medical schools and research institutions to expand knowledge about the fundamental life processes that underlie human health and disease. ###

National Institutes of Health by Danielle Warfield