Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced the appointment of Story C. Landis, as director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). Dr. Landis, who is currently the Scientific Director of the NINDS intramural program, will begin her appointment on September 1, 2003.

"I am very pleased that Dr. Landis has accepted this increased responsibility as Institute Director," said Tommy G. Thompson, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). "Her visionary scientific leadership, together with her ability to build bridges between disparate scientific groups, make her the best person to lead the NINDS into the future."

"Dr. Landis is widely recognized for her research on the development of the nervous system and has already encouraged close ties among the NIH neuroscience community," said Dr. Zerhouni in announcing the appointment. "She is a distinguished scientist and a skilled manager who will be an ideal leader for the NINDS' growing translational research program."

As the new Director of the NINDS, Dr. Landis will oversee an annual budget of $1.5 billion and a staff of more than 900 scientists, physician-scientists, and administrators. The Institute supports research by investigators in public and private institutions across the country, as well as by scientists working in its intramural laboratories and branches in Bethesda, Maryland. Since 1950, the Institute has been at the forefront of U.S. efforts in brain research, with studies in areas ranging from the structure and function of single brain cells to research on the causes, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of neurological disorders and, most recently, the translational research that is helping to bridge the gap. The Institute's mission is to reduce the burden of neurological disease -- a burden borne by every age group, by every segment of society, by people all over the world.

Dr. Landis joined the NINDS in 1995 as Scientific Director and worked with then-Institute Director Zach W. Hall, to coordinate and re-engineer the Institute's intramural research programs. Between 1999 and 2000, under the leadership of NINDS Director Gerald D. Fischbach, she led the movement, together with NIMH Scientific Director Robert Desimone, to bring some sense of unity and common purpose to 200 laboratories from eleven different NIH Institutes, all of which conduct leading edge clinical and basic neuroscience research.