Leroy Hood has stepped down as director of the Institute for Systems Biology. He is replaced by the institute’s co-founder and associated director Alan Aderem. Hood, a co-founder himself, will remain the ISB’s president. Aderem will define the scientific direction of the institute and oversee the integration of its various disciplines, besides leading a research group. He left the University of Washington in 2000 to co-found the ISB. Before 1996, he headed a laboratory at Rockefeller University.