AAAS member Gary H. Gibbons has been named director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health. Gibbons is the founder and current director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute, chair of the Department of Physiology, and professor of physiology and medicine at the Morehouse School of Medicine.
"The globally recognized research and training supported by the NHLBI continues to advance biomedical knowledge in fields related to heart, lung, and blood diseases," Gibbons said in an NIH press release. "I look forward to working with the institute staff and with the many researchers supported by the Institute to foster multi-disciplinary approaches to improve disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment that will advance the health of all Americans."
Gibbons has received 15 grants from NHLBI since 1997 and has been a member of the advisory council there. He studied medicine at Harvard Medical School and was a resident and cardiology fellow at Brigham and Women's. He was on the faculty at Harvard from 1996 to 1999.
Gibbons' institute at Morehouse is recognized for its discovery science related to cardiovascular health of minority populations. His laboratory is focused on discovering novel mediators of vascular disease. His program involves collaborative efforts to study the functional significance of genomic variation and changes in gene activities due to 'epigenetic' modifications of DNA that do not involve a change in the genetic code, as factors that enhance the susceptibility to cardiovascular disease.
- NHLBI press release: Gibbons director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute