NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics said this week that it has elected geneticist Gail Herman to be its new president, taking over the post from Wayne Grody, and that Gerald Feldman will serve as president-elect during Herman's two-year term. The group also said it has added several new faces to its board to replace outgoing members.
Herman started her career at Duke University, where she received her PhD, and completed a residency in genetics at Baylor College of Medicine and joined the faculty at Baylor's Department of Molecular and Human Genetics. She later served on the faculty at Nationwide Children's Hospital and The Ohio State University, where she was director of the Center for Molecular and Human Genetics.
Feldman, who also has been elected to the ACMG board, currently is director of Clinical Genetics Services at Wayne State University School of Medicine, medical director of the Division of Laboratory Genetics and Molecular Pathology at the Detroit Medical Center-University Laboratories, and program director for the Newborn Screening Metabolic Management Program at Children's Hospital of Michigan.
The new board members ACMG named this week include Joel Charrow, who is the director of the Division of Genetics, Birth Defects, and Metabolism and the Genetics Laboratory at the Children's Hospital of Chicago, and a professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University's Fienberg School of Medicine; Kristin Monaghan, who is director of the DNA Diagnostic Laboratory and a medical geneticist in the Department of Medical Genetics at Henry Ford Hospital; Lorraine Potocki, a professor in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine and a consulting geneticist at the Texas Children's Hospital; Maren Scheuner, who is chief of Medical Genetics and director of Health Services Genomics Research at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and director of Clinical Genetic Services for the Veterans Integrated Service Network 22; and Robert Steiner, who is a professor of pediatric research and a faculty member in molecular and medical genetics and cellular biosciences at Oregon Health and Science University.
Quantitative digital pathology firm Definiens has appointed a new advisory board to provide independent advice on trends in tissue diagnostics and clinical digital pathology.
Members of the advisory board include Ron Andrews, president of medical sciences at Life Technologies and former CEO of Clarient and CEO of GE Molecular Diagnostics; Uwe Bicker, dean of the Medical Faculty Mannheim at the University of Heidelberg and a member of the board of directors of Sanofi; Manfred Dietel, director of the Institute of Pathology at Charité Berlin and chairman of the German Society for Pathology; Eric Glassy, medical director of Pathology Inc. and chairman of the Digital Pathology Working Group of the College of American Pathologists; and Gerd Binnig, founder and chief technology officer of Definiens.
AdvanDx said this week that Heiner Dreismann has joined the company's board of directors as an independent director. He was an executive at the Roche group from 1985 to 2006, where he held several senior positions, including president and CEO of Roche Molecular Systems. He also served as a member of Roche's Global Diagnostic Executive Committee. Dreismann currently serves on the board of directors of several public and private healthcare and diagnostic companies, including Myriad Genetics.
Jon Lorsch will be the new director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, according to the National Institutes of Health. He currently is a professor in the Department of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. Lorsch, who is to take up the post in the summer, replaces Jeremy Berg, who stepped down as NIGMS head in June of 2011; Judith Greenberg has been serving as the interim director. The position had been offered to, and accepted by, Chris Kaiser from MIT, but he later declined the post for personal reasons.
VolitionRx, a Singapore-based developer of blood-based cancer diagnostics, has hired Jason Terrell as head of US operations. Terrell, who will act as the company’s liaison with the US Food and Drug Administration, owns and operates a number of diagnostic laboratories in Texas within the Any Lab Test Now franchise. He has also served as a national franchise corporate medical director for Any Lab Test Now.
Genomic and healthcare informatics company GenoSpace has named Daniel Meyer as its new chief financial officer. Meyer's career has been focused on entrepreneurship, venture capital, and investment banking, with an emphasis on the life sciences at Aboretum Ventures and Point Judith Capital. He also served at the healthcare investment banking team at Credit Suisse First Boston.
The American Association for Cancer Research this week named its first class of Fellows of the AACR Academy, which it plans to inaugurate at its upcoming annual meeting in Washington, DC. AACR created the Academy to recognize distinguished scientists, and they were chosen through a peer review process that evaluated their "stellar achievements in cancer research," AACR said.
Although future groups of AACR Fellows will total only 11 members annually, this collection includes 106 scientists, in recognition of the age of the organization.
Included among the inaugural members are California Institute of Technology Professor and President Emeritus David Baltimore; Stanford University School of Medicine Professor Paul Berg; Sydney Brenner, senior distinguished fellow of the Crick-Jacobs Center, Salk Institute for Biological Studies; Leroy Hood, president and co-founder of the Institute for Systems Biology and a professor at the University of Washington's Molecular and Cellular Biology Program; Raymond DuBois, executive director of The Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University; Judy Garber, director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and professor at Harvard Medical School; Leland Hartwell, chief scientist at the Center for Sustainable Health at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University; and president emeritus, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; Paul Nurse, director of the Francis Crick Institute and president of the Royal Society; Frederick Sanger, emeritus professor of the Laboratory for Molecular Biology, University of Cambridge; and James Watson, chancellor emeritus of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and numerous other genetics, genomics, and molecular biology researchers who have contributed to cancer research.
The full list of AACR Fellows can be found here.
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