Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt has appointed four new members to the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). NIDDK is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The NIH is the federal agency with primary responsibility for funding and conducting biomedical research within the United States.

The NIDDK advisory council meets three times annually to advise the NIDDK about its research portfolio. The council typically undertakes broad issues of science policy. Members of the advisory council are drawn from the scientific and lay communities, are appointed for four-year terms, and represent all areas within the institute's research mission. An important role of the council is to provide second-level peer review of grant applications that have been scored by scientific review groups. The council members are an important liaison between the research communities they represent and the NIDDK, which supports each community's research efforts.

NIDDK Director, Griffin P. Rodgers, M.D., M.A.C.P., will chair the advisory council meeting on Jan. 30 and introduce the following new members:
David M. Altshuler, M.D., Ph.D., is assistant professor of genetics and medicine at Harvard Medical School, is a member of the Diabetes Unit and Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and is the director of the Program in Medical and Population Genetics at the Whitehead Institute/ Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Genome Research in Boston. His research interests include the study of human genome sequence variation as a way to understand the inherited basis of common human diseases, with a particular focus on the genetic basis of type 2 diabetes and its complications. Dr. Altshuler joins the Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Diseases (DEM) Subcommittee.

Nancy C. Andrews, M.D., Ph.D., is dean and vice chancellor of Academic Affairs at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C. Dr. Andrews is the first woman to be appointed dean of Duke's School of Medicine and is the only woman to lead one of the nation's top 10 medical schools. Prior to her appointment at Duke, she served as dean for Basic Sciences and Graduate Studies at Harvard Medical School in Boston. She is also an internationally renowned researcher in the fields of pediatric hematology and oncology. Dr. Andrews' research interests include the study of iron absorption and its role in hereditary hemochromatosis, an inherited disease that causes an accumulation of excess iron in the body. Dr. Andrews joins the Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases (KUH) Subcommittee.

More Voices