Dr. Charles P. Friedman has been named the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s first associate director for research informatics and information technology.

Dr. Charles P. Friedman has been named the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's first associate director for research informatics and information technology.

He will provide leadership for the development and implementation of an integrated information and knowledge management environment that spans the range of institute activities. The new role will bring together the science of informatics with the ongoing development and support of NHLBI's information resources.

Prior to joining NHLBI, Friedman was on leave from the University of Pittsburgh and had been working as a senior scholar in NLM's extramural programs division. At Pitt, Friedman was professor of medicine and associate vice chancellor for biomedical informatics. While at NLM, Friedman managed its grant portfolio in bioinformatics and computational biology as well as the library's institutional and individual training grants in biomedical informatics. He was part of the trans-NIH team that established the program of National Centers for Biomedical Computing.

Originally trained in physics and education at MIT and the University of North Carolina, Friedman has been programming computers for research, education, business and pleasure since 1966. Looking ahead to his new responsibilities, he noted: "In thinking about how to realize the enormous potential of modern biocomputing to enhance everything we do at NIH, it is important to stay focused on the technology's role to support professional people doing difficult, creative work. Informatics is about people and technology in tandem, doing things together that would not be otherwise possible."