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| The NIH tenure track assures tenure candidates of sufficient
independent resources to fulfill their potential for excellence in
a setting of complete academic freedom; as opposed to a permanent
government job, the concept of "tenure" is thus employed
as a useful and familiar indicator of institutional commitment to
independent research career development as conceived in research-oriented
universities. Currently, the Institute is supporting 21 investigators
in its tenure track, and two investigators were awarded tenure during
the year. Recently, we also implemented the concept of a Staff Scientist.
Such scientists have highly sophisticated and specialized skills that
are critical to the long-term success of a team of biomedical researchers.
Staff Scientists are not allocated independent research resources
and work on projects directed by the Principal Investigator of the
team to which they belong. Currently, we have 37 Staff Scientists
in our ranks. The Institute's efforts in technology transfer proved highly successful during the past year. Currently, more than 40 NICHD research advances are at some stage of patent/licensing development, with special emphasis on the new vaccines created by the Laboratory of Developmental and Molecular Immunity and the Laser Capture Microdissection Apparatus developed by Dr. Robert Bonner. During 2001, NICHD scientists received many honors, awards, and other recognition. Most notable were the elections of C. Michael Cashel, M.D., Ph.D., to the editorial boards of the Journal of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Biology and of George P. Chrousos, M.D., to the editorial board of the American Journal of Medicine; the appointment of Alan G. Hinnebusch as co-organizer of the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Translational Control; the award of the 2001 Feulgin Prize of the Society of Histochemistry to Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, Ph.D., and her appointment to the board of editors of Histochemistry and Cell Biology; and the 2001 Sabin Award to John Robbins. During the past few years, NIH has undertaken a new Institute-wide effort to develop "special interest" groups that transcend the usual laboratory and Institute boundaries and thus create forums for scientific exchange among all scientists on the Bethesda campus who share a scholarly interest. Currently, more than 30 special interest groups meet at regular intervals to exchange discipline-specific experimental approaches and concepts and to provide an informal critique of preliminary data generated by the groups’ members. Among the groups organized and led by the NICHD are Cell Biology (Lippincott-Schwartz); Developmental Biology (Sargent); Mouse Development (Westphal); Yeast (Hinnebusch); Xenopus/Zebrafish (Chitnis/Weinstein); Acetyltransferase (Klein); Biophysics (Basser); Cell Cycle (Dasso); and Basic and Clinical Endocrinology (Chrousos). These special interest groups also constitute an extraordinary resource in that they are well positioned to provide advice to the NIH on recruitment, the selection of search committee members and peer reviewers, and trends in their respective area of research. Thus, this Institute continues to mount an ambitious and highly regarded Intramural Program with a continuing increase in the quality and quantity of its scientific productivity. The challenge for the future is to maintain this desirable trend and build on current directions of scientific inquiry. |
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Owen M. Rennert, M.D. Scientific Director National Institute of Child Health and Human Development |
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