May–June 2023 | NIH Intramural Research Program

NIH Rare Disease Day 2023

Virtual No More, Rare Disease Day Comes Charging Back to the NIH

Hundreds of researchers, medical industry representatives, patient advocates, and patients with a rare disease and their families dusted off their zebra-printed neckties, shirts, and shawls and packed the Natcher Conference Center for Rare Disease Day (RDD), the first in-person event after a pandemic-induced two-year hiatus.

To Touch and Be Touched

Nobel Laureate Ardem Patapoutian Delivers the Annual Marshall Nirenberg Lecture

Ardem Patapoutian was a teenager in the midst of re-escalating violence and hyperinflation in Lebanon, his native country, when his parents sent him and his brother off to live with an uncle in Los Angeles. Patapoutian would go on to earn a doctoral degree in biology from the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, California) in 1996 and embark upon a career, almost entirely at Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, investigating the biological receptors for temperature and touch.

From the Deputy Director for Intramural Research

Equal Pay for Equal Work: A Concept Across Many Boundaries

NIH has made substantial progress in the past several years toward recognition and correction of inequities in many different arenas. Although this progress can never be as rapid or as complete as would be optimal, it has been achieved in ways that are perhaps more likely to be conducive to durable culture change than if it were instantaneously imposed by an external force.

Mind the Growth Mindset

Guest Editorial: Professional Development for Staff Clinicians

Staff clinicians have played an essential role in the clinical research enterprise since the inception of the NIH Clinical Center in 1953. We are 320 highly trained physicians and dentists spread across 18 institutes and centers (ICs). Like our clinical faculty counterparts in academic medical centers, staff clinicians continually adapt to revisions in clinical guidelines, improvements in human subject research protection, and new challenges in the practice of medicine.

Christopher McBain Named New NICHD Scientific Director

Accomplished Scientist and Leader to Head Diverse Research Portfolio

In January 2023, The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) announced the selection of Christopher McBain as its new Scientific Director (SD). McBain had been serving as Acting SD since June 2021.

A Shared 30th Anniversary

Women Scientists Advisors Celebrate 30 Years of Advocating for Equality

The NIH Catalyst shares both an anniversary and a vision with the Women Scientists Advisors (WSA). In our first issue (February 1993, pages 4–5), Hynda Kleinman, now a retired section chief of National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), reported findings from the 26-member Task Force on the Status of NIH Intramural Women Scientists, which she led. The task force was formed in November 1991 by then-NIH Director Bernadine Healy to identify both real and perceived impediments to NIH women scientists.

All of Us Journeys to NIH Campus

Two All of Us Research Program mobile units, each aptly named “Journey,” will visit the NIH Campus May 8–12 at the Clinical Center’s south parking lot, 10H and outside Natcher Building, 45. Stop by to learn more about the program’s goals and achievements over the past five years, explore the option to enroll in the program onsite, and learn how to leverage the All of Us dataset for your own research projects.

Star-Nosed Moles, Electric Eels, and Other Tales of Evolution’s Mysteries Solved

Kenneth Catania Presents the First Porter Book Club Lecture

“Nature was my first classroom,” said Kenneth Catania to an engaged group of about fifty people gathered for the inaugural Porter Book Club event. Catania is the Stevenson Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee), and presented his book Great Adaptations: Star-Nosed Moles, Electric Eels, and Other Tales of Evolution’s Mysteries Solved, to NIH staff on March 10.

Colleagues: Recently Tenured

Meet your recently tenured colleagues: Jonine D. Figueroa (NCI), Neil Hanchard (NHGRI), Alexander Kelly (NCI), Steven Moore (NCI), and Manu Omar Platt (NIBIB).

News You Can Use

ScHARe Platform Promotes Minority Participation in Science

The Science Collaborative for Health Disparities and Artificial Intelligence Bias Reduction (ScHARe), a joint National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) and National Institute of Nursing Research initiative is designed to advance the science of health disparities and to improve health care delivery by revealing and minimizing biases in all their forms.

Bang for the Buck: NIH Impact Pages

Updated Website Showcases NIH's Impact on Health, Science, and Society

Read all about the impacts of NIH research and more—including how NIH improves health, revolutionizes science, and serves society—on the recently refreshed and redesigned NIH Impact Pages.

News Briefs

Yasmine Belkaid Appointed Institut Pasteur President

The Institut Pasteur (Paris) has appointed Yasmine Belkaid as its next President. Belkaid is currently the scientific director of the NIH Center for Human Immunology, Inflammation, and Autoimmunity, as well as chief of the Laboratory of Host Immunity and Microbiome and chief of the Metaorganism Immunity Section in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

NIH Hosts 29th Annual TYCTWD

Take Your Child to Work Day was celebrated on the main campus on April 27.

Research Briefs

Read about scientific advances and discoveries by NIH intramural scientists: rare gene variants linked to age-related macular degeneration; new approach to treating liver cancer; software assembles complete genome sequences on demand; DNA sequencing during treatment predicts survival from acute myeloid leukemia; a protein crucial to the life cycle of SARS-CoV-2 has a new role; toxic protein that causes a rare muscular dystrophy also kills the precursors of the human nose.

COVID–19 Timeline at NIH (March-April 2023)

COVID–19 Research and Activities at NIH

Highlights of the COVID–19-related activities that were going on at NIH in March and April 2023.

Announcements: Kudos

Two New NIH Members of the National Academy of Sciences

Congratulations to the two NIHers who were recently elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2023: Andre Nussenzweig (NCI-CCR) and John O'Shea (NIAMS).

Announcements

News about lectures, symposia, and more.

Photographic Moment

New Surgery, Radiology and Lab Medicine Wing

Shades of things to come. The famed model of the Building 10 complex that sits in the Clinical Center atrium has been updated to feature the new Surgery, Radiology and Lab Medicine (SRLM) wing.

This page was last updated on Thursday, May 4, 2023