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Ikeda Joins NIGMS as Program Director

Biochemist Dr. Richard Ikeda has joined NIGMS as a program director in the Division of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Biological Chemistry, where he will manage a portfolio of grants covering the areas of enzymology and bioenergetics. He comes to NIGMS from Georgia Institute of Technology, where he has been an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry since 1993. He joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 1986, and since has been researching the molecular biology of bacterial and viral transcription and replication, areas he began investigating in the early 1980's as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Charles Richardson at Harvard Medical School. Ikeda earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from California Institute of Technology in 1984.

Five Named to NICHD Council

Five new members were recently appointed to the National Advisory Child Health and Human Development Council. They are Drs. Elena Fuentes-Afflick of San Francisco, Mindy Aisen of Washington, D.C., Mary D'Alton of New York City, Kristin Moore of Washington, D.C., and Margaret Hostetter of New Haven, Conn.

Fuentes-Afflick is assistant professor in the department of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research interests are focused on health policy issues as they apply to minority women and children and in addressing medical effectiveness issues as they affect diverse populations.

Aisen is the Department of Veterans Affairs ex officio representative who currently serves as director of rehabilitation research and development, Veterans Health Administration. She is a leading scientist in the areas of biomedical engineering, spinal cord injury and multiple sclerosis.

D'Alton is professor of obstetrics and gynecology, department of obstetrics and gynecology, and director of the maternal-fetal unit, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. Her research interests include assessment of fetal well-being, diagnosis of the fetal patient during the first and second trimester by ultrasonography, amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling.

The five new members of the National Advisory Child Health and Human Development Council are (seated, from l) Dr. Elena Fuentes-Afflick, Dr. Mindy Aisen; (back, from l) Dr. Mary D'Alton, Dr. Kristin Moore and Dr. Margaret Hostetter.

Moore is president and senior scholar at Child Trends, Inc. Her expertise on the costs and consequences of adolescent fertility has made her a resource to both research and policy development.

Hostetter is director, Yale University Child Health Research Center and head of the division of immunology in the department of pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine. Her research focus is on Candida albicans and Streptococcus pneumoniae and the clinical investigations of health and development in internationally adopted children.

Klebanoff To Direct NICHD Division

Dr. Mark A. Klebanoff was recently named director of NICHD's Division of Epidemiology, Statistics and Prevention Research. He has been a senior investigator at NICHD since 1987. He joined NICHD in 1983 as a Public Health Service Epidemiology Training Program fellow. He has conducted epidemiologic research on a wide variety of topics in maternal and child health, with particular focus on fetal growth and pregnancy complications. Klebanoff has published widely cited reports on the effects of maternal work and physical activity on pregnancy outcome, the familial aggregation of birth weight, and the relationship between genital tract infection and preterm birth. In addition to his accomplishments at NICHD, he has served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Epidemiology and Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology.