Vital Signs

Worthy of Note: Honors, awards, appointments, etc.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science recently elevated three members of the DMS faculty to the rank of fellow. Charles Barlowe, Ph.D., a professor of biochemistry, was recognized for "distinguished contributions to the field of protein and lipid trafficking, particularly for elucidating molecular mechanisms of vesicular transport between endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi complexes." Ta-Yuan "T.Y." Chang, Ph.D., a professor of biochemistry, was honored for "distinguished contributions to the understanding of cholesterol metabolism and its role in human disease." And William Wickner, M.D., a professor of biochemistry, was recognized for "his singular efforts in the isolation and characterization of the bacterial secretory protein translocation complex and the complete machinery for yeast vacuole fusion."

George O'Toole, Ph.D., a professor of microbiology and immunology,was recently elected to membership in the American Academy of Microbiology, the honorific leadership group of the American Society for Microbiology, the world's oldest and largest life science organization. Membership in the academy recognizes scientists who have made "outstanding contributions to microbiology." See the article "Science vs. Slime" for insight into O'Toole's research.

Bruce Stanton, Ph.D., the Andrew C. Vail Memorial Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, was recently presented with the University of Maine's Distinguished Honors Graduate Award. Stanton is a 1974 graduate of UMaine's Honors Program.

Jeffrey Cohen, M.D., a professor of neurology, was appointed to the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The committee advises the FDA commissioner and evaluates data concerning the safety and effectiveness of drugs for use in the treatment of neurologic diseases.

Duane Compton, Ph.D., a professor of biochemistry, has been named senior associate dean for research at DMS. One of his new responsibilities is chairing the Biomedical Research Council, a committee that will guide the strategic direction for research at DMS. He has been a member of the Dartmouth faculty since 1993. (See this issue's "Faculty Focus" for more on his work.)

Shaofeng Yan, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of pathology, received the 2010 Hitchcock Foundation's Tiffany Blake Career Development Fellowship. The fellowship is awarded to a young Dartmouth investigator who is committed to clinically oriented research and translating that research into effective treatments for patients.

Errata: An article in the Vital Signs section of our Winter 2010 issue, about a partnership between Uruguay and DHMC's Epilepsy Program, stated that Mark Natola, DHMC's manager of neurodiagnostics, was a member of a Dartmouth team that traveled to Uruguay in 2002; although Natola has been very active in the partnership over the years, he did not participate in the 2002 trip. And the Lisa Dwyer who commented in the Winter Letters section about cystic fibrosis research lives in Oshkosh, Wis., not Hopkinton, N.H. We regret the errors.