Dr. Story C. Landis, NINDS scientific director, has been named the new director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Her appointment begins on Sept. 1.

As director, Landis will oversee an annual budget of $1.5 billion and a staff of more than 900 scientists, physician-scientists and administrators.

"Dr. Landis is widely recognized for her research on the development of the nervous system and has already encouraged close ties among the NIH neuroscience community," said NIH director Dr. Elias Zerhouni in announcing the appointment. "She is a distinguished scientist and a skilled manager who will be an ideal leader for the NINDS's growing translational research program."

Dr. Story C. Landis Landis joined NINDS in 1995 as scientific director and worked with then-institute director Dr. Zach W. Hall to coordinate and re-engineer NINDS's intramural research programs. Between 1999 and 2000, under the leadership of NINDS director Dr. Gerald D. Fischbach, she led the movement, together with NIMH scientific director Dr. Robert Desimone, to bring some sense of unity and common purpose to 200 laboratories from 11 different NIH institutes, all of which conduct leading-edge clinical and basic neuroscience research. A native of New England, Landis received her undergraduate degree in biology from Wellesley College in 1967 and her master's degree (1970) and her Ph.D. (1973) from Harvard University, where she conducted research on cerebellar development in mice. After postdoctoral work at Harvard studying transmitter plasticity in sympathetic neurons, she served on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School department of neurobiology.

In 1985, she joined the faculty of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, where she held many academic positions including associate professor of pharmacology, professor and director of the Center on Neurosciences, and chair of the department of neurosciences, a department she was instrumental in establishing. Under her leadership, Case Western's neuroscience department achieved worldwide acclaim and a reputation for excellence.

Throughout her research career, Landis has made many fundamental contributions to the understanding of developmental interactions required for synapse formation. She has garnered many honors and awards and is an elected fellow of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Neurological Association. In 2002, she was named president-elect of the Society for Neuroscience.

"I am delighted to have been chosen to lead an NIH institute with an outstanding staff, whose investigators have a wonderful history of accomplishments in basic and clinical neurology," Landis said. "This is a particularly exciting time in neuroscience with many opportunities for rapid translation of scientific discovery into new diagnostics and therapeutics. I look forward to developing strong collaborations between the NINDS, the other NIH institutes that fund neuroscience research, and our most important partners, patient and professional advocacy groups."

Since February 2001, NINDS has been led by acting director Dr. Audrey Penn, who has served as the institute's deputy director since 1996.