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Stanfield Named CSR Deputy Director

Dr. Brent Stanfield was recently named deputy director of the Center for Scientific Review. He will work with CSR director Dr. Ellie Ehrenfeld to establish a strategic plan for CSR, develop organizational policies, and plan, direct and coordinate CSR's operations. He will provide broad scientific leadership, and ensure that the center is responsive to the needs of the institutes and centers.

Stanfield was formerly director of the Office of Science Policy and Program Planning at the National Institute of Mental Health. Before that, he ran the NIMH unit on developmental neuroanatomy in the Laboratory of Neurophysiology. His research expertise was in the area of developmental neuroscience. While at NIMH, he spent 8 months at CSR, helping to implement reorganization of the study sections that review neuroscience grant applications.

He received his B.S. with honors from the University of California at Irvine and his Ph.D. in neurobiology from Washington University in St. Louis. After postdoctoral training at Washington University and then at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, he was appointed to the Salk Institute faculty in the developmental neurobiology laboratory and also assistant adjunct professor in the department of neurosciences at the University of California School of Medicine at San Diego. In 1987, Stanfield moved his lab to the NIMH intramural program.

He has published a large number of papers, many on various aspects of the development of hippocampal formation and the cerebral cortex. He has also served as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Comparative Neurology and as an associate editor of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Ehrenfeld expressed her "excitement and relief to have recruited someone with Brent's outstanding talents."

Plexico Named CIT Deputy Director of Operations

Perry Plexico was recently named deputy director of operations for the Center for Information Technology. He now oversees CIT's four service divisions — customer service, computer system services (DCSS), enterprise and custom applications, and network systems and telecommunications. Previously, as director of DCSS, he guided the organization through several transitions, including the successful 1997 DHHS data center consolidation that strengthened the NIH Computer Center and substantially reduced information technology costs. He chaired the NIH architecture management group that was for several years the principal technical advisory body to the interim NIH chief information officer. His accomplishments include publication of scientific and engineering papers and coauthorship of a popular book on object-oriented programming.

CSR Names Three New Scientific Review Administrators

Dr. Ellen Schwartz recently joined the Center for Scientific Review as scientific review administrator of the social sciences, nursing, epidemiology, and methods (SNEM)-1 study section in the SNEM integrated review group. Her section reviews applications involving community-based interventions to improve health outcomes, as well as studies of the socio-environmental context in which health, disease, behavior and normal development are embedded. After receiving her doctorate, Schwartz was first a research associate in the Center for Educational Policy and Management at the University of Oregon; then an assistant professor at the Teachers College, Columbia University, where she specialized in the economics of education. From 1987 until she joined CSR, she was a senior evaluator for the U.S. General Accounting Office.

Dr. Charles Rafferty is the new scientific review administrator for the safety and occupational health (SOH) study section. This section is chartered by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but will now be operated within the Center for Scientific Review through an intra-agency agreement. SOH reviews applications in occupationally related diseases and injuries, effects of exposure to toxic factors in the work environment, industrial hygiene and engineering, occupational medicine, and workplace risks including stress and psychological factors. Rafferty spent 2 ½ years as a scientific associate in neurobiology at the Kemforschungsanlage in Juelich, Germany; 2 years at Cornell University as a postdoctoral associate in plant biology; and then 2 ½ years as a research associate in vision research at the National Eye Institute. He was then a research chemist at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C., where he created a research program on the effects of microwave fields on cellular systems. From 1987 until joining CSR, Rafferty was a senior manager of the EMF Health Effects Program for the Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, Calif., where his fields included health risk assessment of powerline electromagnetic force (EMF), bioengineering, biophysics, cell biology, toxicology and cancer mechanisms.

Dr. Yvette M. Davis recently joined the Center for Scientific Review as scientific review administrator of the SNEM-2 study section; SNEM stands for social sciences, nursing, epidemiology, and methods research. Davis' section reviews applications involving behavioral epidemiology and behavioral genetics. She spent 8 years as staff veterinarian at an animal hospital in Philadelphia. After receiving a master's degree in 1990 from Johns Hopkins University, she became an epidemiology fellow at the Food and Drug Administration. In 1992, she joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, she investigated the World Trade Center terrorist bombing site in New York City. From 1996 until she joined CSR, she was a medical epidemiologist in CDC's Division of Tuberculosis Elimination.