Nussbaum Named ASHG President
Dr. Robert L. Nussbaum, a senior scientist at the National Human Genome Research Institute, assumed the presidency of the American Society of Human Genetics on Jan. 1. ASHG was founded in 1948 as the primary professional membership organization for human geneticists in the Americas. Today, ASHG has nearly 8,000 members, including researchers, academicians, clinicians, laboratory practice professionals, genetic counselors, nurses and others with a special interest in human genetics. In addition to his roles as chief of NHGRI's Genetic Disease Research Branch and of the Inherited Disease Research Branch, Nussbaum is director of NHGRI's Clinical Molecular Genetics Training Program. He also is an executive faculty member of the Joint National Institutes of Health-Johns Hopkins University Genetic Counseling Training Program, and the project officer for the Center for Inherited Disease Research in Baltimore, a research center that analyzes common disorders caused by the actions of multiple genes and interactions with the environment. Nussbaum's tenure as president of ASHG will run for one year, ending in January 2005.
Menzel, Rudolph Join CSR
Dr. Rolf Menzel recently joined the Center for Scientific Review, where he is a scientific review administrator for the infectious diseases and microbiology integrated review group. He earned his Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of California, Berkeley, studying bacterial genetics and gene regulation. Menzel studied the regulation of DNA gyrase as an NIH staff fellow, working with Dr. Martin Gellert at the NIDDK Laboratory of Metabolic Diseases. He continued this research at the Dupont Co. before moving to Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he designed and developed drug screens. He then cofounded an early-stage drug development company, Small Molecular Therapeutics, Inc., that was sold to Morphochem. Most recently, he founded Optigenix, Inc., which reengineered industrial enzymes using a proprietary recombination-based technology.
Dr. Joseph Rudolph has returned to NIH as scientific review administrator of the neurotoxicity and alcohol study section at CSR. He earned his Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Florida, where he studied the effects of chronic ethanol exposure on NMDA receptor pharmacology and physiology. He first came to the NIH intramural program as a postdoctoral fellow, studying the genetics of alcoholism and other mental disorders in the NIAAA Laboratory of Neurogenetics. Before coming to CSR he was group leader of the applied genomics and molecular genetics core facility at Transgenomic, Inc., in Gaithersburg.
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