Bill Tumas from the Chemistry Division's Actinide, Catalysis and Separations (C-SIC) group has been named interim Los Alamos Program Director for Office of Science programs as L. Scott Cram retires from that position. Tumas' appointment takes effect today. Tumas received his doctorate in Organic Chemistry from Stanford University in 1985 with Prof. John Brauman as an National Science Foundation and Hertz Graduate Fellow. He did postdoctoral research with Prof. Robert Grubbs at Caltech as an National Institutes of Health and Chaim Weizmann Postdoctoral Fellow. He joined DuPont Central Research in 1987 where he was a project leader for oxidation and environmental catalysis. Tumas came to Los Alamos in 1993 and was made group leader in the Chemical Sciences and Technology Division in 1995. He is currently the group leader of the Actinide, Catalysis and Separations Chemistry group.
As acting Program Director for Office of Science, Tumas will be responsible for leadership, communication and coordination of Office of Science operations at Los Alamos. He will work closely with the Associate Directorate for Strategic Research, the Los Alamos Office of Science Board of Directors and Laboratory program managers to build on current Office of Science successes. His primary duties will be to maintain the Laboratory's connection with DOE's Office of Science, to formalize and document the operations of the Office of Science operations at the Laboratory, to help identify program development opportunities and needs and coordinate scientific and technical program development efforts.
Scott Cram will retire from the senior science advisor post after 33 years at the Laboratory. Cram has worked primarily in the areas of flow cytometry, the role of karyotype instability in tumorigenesis and the human genome program. He helped establish the NIH-sponsored National Flow Cytometry Resource at Los Alamos and served as the first director. He also played a key role in the National Laboratory Gene Library Project and in work that led to the discovery of the DNA sequence that defines the end of each chromosome. He served as an assistant group leader, deputy group leader and group leader in the Life Sciences Division. For nine years, he was deputy director of the Life Sciences Division.
Cram will retire to pursue work in flow cytometry. Cram currently serves on the NIH's, Center for Scientific Review Study Section on Cell Development and Function. He also serves on the editorial boards of the journals Cytometry and Clinical Applications of Cytometry and is an adjunct professor in the Pathology Department at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.
A nationwide search for a permanent program director for Office of Science Programs has begun. Paul Weber of the Earth and Environmental Science Division will chair an external advisory search committee that will carefully consider the critical requirements of the Los Alamos Office of Science program director position.