scientific director’s
preface
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“Humanity has been given the priceless gift
of creativity, but it’s vital that you understand how it works.
Creativity is the essence of the human spirit, and flowers best when
it’s unconstrained. If you try to control it for your own ends, you
must learn that you get only what you ask for. The unexpected will not arise.
You are not wizards.” Donald
W. Braben, “Pioneering research: a risk worth
taking.” (J. Wiley & Sons, September 2004.) The research
programs within the Division of Intramural Research of the National Institute
of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) span scientific disciplines
from physics and chemistry and the study of molecular interactions to
investigations examining the influence of culture, economics, and social
structure on the acquisition of cognitive and emotional behavior. The
Division asks questions about the physics and chemistry, the biology, and the
pathology of how cells communicate; how they identify their environment; how
they influence the behavior of their neighbors; and, finally, how such
processes dictate human development. The Division takes the knowledge derived
from these efforts and, when it has the insight and wisdom, applies it for
the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of human diseases. Doctor, Latin, from docere, to teach The NICHD is a
center for research in the healing arts and sciences that focuses on the
woman and child (and therefore, by extension the family unit). As part of its
mission, the Division of Intramural Research must accord primary importance
to the transmission of new information to future generations of scientists.
It is vital that access for students, at all levels, remains open and fully
supported. Science flourishes only in an environment where scientists work as
mentors in concert with their postdoctoral fellows, graduates, and college
and younger students. At present, NICHD counts 316 postdoctoral fellows, 17
post-MD clinical fellows, 21 graduate students, and 97 postbaccalaureate
trainees within the Division of Intramural Research. As the
development of an organism is based on the interaction/communication between
cells and within cells, so the acquisition of new information and its
application to human diseases is based on the interaction/communication among
scientists. Scientists need to interact at scientific meetings and symposia
with their counterparts in all sectors of the scientific community. During the past
year, NICHD intramural investigators made significant contributions to
science and their particular disciplines. Research contributions include the
development of a new anthrax vaccine, development of new photoactivatable-fluors
that have profound implications for confocal imaging, elucidation of details
of intracellular protein trafficking mechanisms, and elucidation of the
crystal structure of kainate receptors and its
implications for the function and specificity of such receptors. Clinical
investigations have given us new insight into the genetics of endocrine
tumors, the multifactorial components of childhood and adolescent obesity,
and the role of cholesterol metabolism in fetal development and
malformations. These and a broad spectrum of other research investigations
have contributed to knowledge of biological processes as diverse as mothering
and its role on cognitive and behavioral development, to the physics of
macromolecules and gap junctions, and to the study of diverse animal models
such as zebrafish to investigate the regulation of
cellular communication and morphogenesis. As recognition of
these contributions, investigators from the Division of Intramural Research
have been asked to chair meetings such as the International Symposium
“Fluctuation and Noise,” American Society of Human Genetics
Symposium on X-Inactivation, Gordon Conference on Myelin, Cold Spring Harbor
Meeting on Translational Control, Gordon Conference on Ion Channels,
conference on “The Synapse: Molecular Mechanisms of Plasticity,”
Gordon Conference on Oxidative Stress and Disease, Gordon Conference on Genes
and Behavior, to mention only a few. Some of the individual honors received
by NICHD scientists include: The Alexander Novikoff
Lecture at the Gordon Research Conference to Juan Bonifacino,
PhD; the 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Society for Psychoneuroendocrinology to George Chrousos, MD; the
Milstein Award of the International Society for Interferon and Cytokine
Research to Keiko Ozato,
PhD. These are only a few of the distinctions received by NICHD scientists
during 2004. “It is folly to use as one’s guide in
the selection of fundamental science the criterion of utility. Not because
[scientists]. . . despise utility. But because . . .
useful outcomes are best identified after the making of discoveries, rather
than before.” John C. Polanyi. Keynote address to the Canadian Society for the Weizmann Institute of Science, The Division of
Intramural Research of NICHD thus maintains an ambitious and esteemed
research program that continues to demonstrate the highest levels of
achievement in the quality and quantity of its science. Its challenge is to
maintain this desirable trend and build on its current directions of
scientific inquiry by allowing for the “unexpected” and opening
the minds of our fellows and successors to the realms of discovery.
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