The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), recently announced the appointment of five individuals to senior management positions within NIAID.

Hugh Auchincloss, Jr., M.D., has been named Principal Deputy Director of NIAID. In that capacity, he will serve as second in command to NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., and will have broad responsibilities for carrying out the Institute's many programs.

"Dr. Auchincloss brings a wealth of scientific expertise and knowledge to his new position," says Dr. Fauci. "His experience and leadership abilities will make him a great asset to our Institute in furthering our important medical research efforts."

Prior to his appointment at NIAID, Dr. Auchincloss was Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School where he earned an international reputation in the field of organ transplantation. For more than 17 years, he operated a laboratory in transplantation immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston with multiple research interests, including the mechanisms and control of tissue graft rejection, the mechanisms of transplantation tolerance induction, the use of pancreas and islet transplantation for the treatment of diabetes, and the prevention of recurrent autoimmunity.

In 1998, he founded the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Center for Islet Transplantation and served as its director until 2003. Most recently, he served as Chief Operating Officer of the Immune Tolerance Network, an NIAID-directed international consortium of clinical researchers dedicated to developing approaches to induce immune tolerance, a process where the immune system is selectively adjusted by suppressing harmful immune responses and keeping protective responses intact. The goal of the research approach is to increase the number of successful transplants and treatments for autoimmune diseases that attack the body's own cells, such as type 1 diabetes, lupus and arthritis.

Dr. Auchincloss also serves as the chairman of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Subcommittee on Xenotransplantation and in 2005 was elected President of the American Society of Transplantation. He has authored numerous scientific articles and texts and serves on the editorial boards of several major scientific publications.

In 1972, Dr. Auchincloss graduated from Yale University with bachelor's degrees in both political science and economics and a master's degree in economics. Dr. Auchincloss received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1976.

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