From the Deputy Director for Intramural Research

A Time of ReNEWal

BY NINA F. SCHOR, DDIR

On The New York Times Learning Network, they post a “Word of the Day.” The NIH Catalyst comes out bimonthly or every 60 days, though, so I write this column to tell you that the NIH word of this first issue of the Catalyst in this new year of 2024 is “new” because new things abound!

NIH welcomed a new director. Monica Bertagnolli has come to her new role as NIH director from National Cancer Institute, where she served as the 16th NCI director for one year. She is passionate about bringing science to bear on the health and well-being of all people and about re-establishing trust in and appreciation of science and medicine in the public. Bertagnolli is a surgical oncologist who came to NIH in 2022 from Harvard’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute (Boston, Massachusetts). She grew up on a cattle ranch in Wyoming, where she saw firsthand the challenges faced by rural communities to access medical care and participate in medical research. She majored in engineering at Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey) before pursuing her medical studies at the University of Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah). Director Bertagnolli is well acquainted with and invested in the NIH Intramural Research Program and, especially, its people!

President Biden also has named a new NCI Director, W. Kimryn Rathmell. Rathmell comes to NIH from Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee), where she was professor and Hugh Jackson Morgan Chair in the Department of Medicine. She is a medical oncologist and cancer biologist who majored in biology and chemistry at the University of Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls, Iowa) and pursued her medical and doctoral degrees in biophysics at Stanford University (Stanford, California). Rathmell is a renowned expert on the genetics and molecular biology of complex renal cancers and a member of The Cancer Genome Atlas Program. She also played important leadership roles at Vanderbilt in biomedical education, training, and career development.

And there’s more! The past year brought us several new scientific and clinical directors; newly tenured senior investigators; new Stadtman, Lasker, distinguished, and independent research scholars; new assistant clinical investigators, staff clinicians, and staff scientists; and new fellows, trainees, and students. As if that weren’t enough, we have nine newly named NIH Distinguished Investigators.

• Emily Chew (NEI)
• Francis Collins (NHGRI)
• Mariana Kaplan (NIAMS)
• Daniel Levy (NHLBI)
• Luigi Notarangelo (NIAID)
• Julie Segre (NHGRI)
• Robert Tycko (NIDDK)
• Richard Youle (NINDS)
• Keji Zhao (NHLBI)

Congratulations to each and every one of you at every career level and from every institute!

On a note that is of direct and critical relevance to this column and everything in the print and pictures around it, The NIH Catalyst welcomed Jennifer Harker as its new managing editor. Harker joins the Office of Intramural Research division of communication from the NIEHS, where she was a technical writer-editor. She earned her undergraduate degrees at Amarillo College (A.S. in journalism) and Arizona State University (B.A. in sociology) and obtained her master’s degree in communication at West Texas A&M University (Canyon, Texas). Harker then earned her doctorate in mass communication with an emphasis in strategic communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). She has served as an assistant professor at West Virginia University (Morgantown, West Virginia) and as adjunct faculty at UNC-CH. Harker has been an author, a graduate thesis mentor, and a lecturer in sport communication, as well, so we are indeed fortunate to have garnered her for our Catalyst team!

We are also in the midst of a new Continuing Resolution, which, for whatever sense of “marking time” it brought, prevented a government shutdown. Gratitude and relief are the only appropriate responses!

There is one more “new” for this column: re-NEW-al. I hope all of you have come to your work at NIH after the winter break and holiday season refreshed and with renewed vigor and commitment to all that science, medicine, equitable community, and civility bring to us, to our country, and in this very challenging landscape, to all the world. With thanks and very best wishes to you all for a happy, healthy, and productive New Year!