PHYSICS

Katepalli Sreenivasan

Katepalli Sreenivasan, professor of physics at the University of Maryland and an expert in fluid dynamics and turbulence, was brought up in India to consider ways of making a contribution to humanity in whatever he was doing. He will have every opportunity to do just that when he becomes director of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Italy next month. Although based in Trieste, the ICTP was founded in 1964 by Abdus Salam with the aim of fostering the growth of science and research in developing countries. “As I am from the developing part of the world it made a lot of sense,” Sreenivasan says.

Once he makes the move, Sreenivasan will have been involved in scientific enterprises on four continents. He received his doctorate in aerospace engineering at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and spent two years as a post-doctoral research fellow in Australia before moving to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He moved from Yale University to Maryland last January.

He has also been adept at moving between disciplines. He was an engineer by training, but took courses in physics and mathematics when he was a student. A few years after he came to the United States, there was a lot of activity in nonlinear dynamics, which led him to study complexity. “Science is about connections, really,” Sreenivasan says.

GENOMICS

Huntington Willard

Huntington Willard, director and president of the research institute of University Hospitals of Cleveland, became director of the Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy last month. Willard has specialized in understanding how chromosomes function and organize their genes. His group gained international attention in 1997 when it constructed the first human artificial chromosome.

The $200-million genomics institute was launched in 2000 and is organized into five research areas — the Center for Human Genetics, the Center for Human Disease Models, the Center for Genome Technology, the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and the Center for Genome Ethics, Law and Policy. As the institute expands, Willard anticipates hiring 25–40 scientists.

SPACE

Giovanni Bignami

Last month Giovanni Bignami left the science directorship of the Italian space agency ASI to take up the directorship of the Laboratory of Space Astrophysics (CESR) in Toulouse, France.

Bignami denies that his move is a protest at the Italian government's lack of commitment to basic research, which is how it was interpreted in the Italian press. Although he calls the government's funding policy a “grave mistake”, he says that his move is more an endorsement of European science than a condemnation of Italian policy. “France has a tradition of opening key positions to scientists from other countries, and as I take up my new job, I underline the European level at which an institute as significant as the CESR should operate.”

Although he is now based in the south of France, Bignami will maintain his chair of astronomy at the University of Pavia in Italy.

ASTRONOMY

Robert Brown

After 33 years with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, Virginia, deputy director Robert Brown will move in May to become director of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC). NAIC's main facility is the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico — at 305 metres in diameter it is the world's largest, and most sensitive, single-dish radio telescope. Brown plans to spend about a quarter of his time at the telescope and the rest at NAIC's site at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

In recent years, Brown has played a leading role in the international group that is designing and constructing the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) observatory in Chile. “As a result of that, I'm aware of the problems that can happen when building big projects in remote locations,” says Brown, who adds that even though Arecibo is a radio telescope and ALMA uses an array of collectors, the challenges of managing both facilities from a distance have some similarities. “Astronomers are used to getting data remotely,” Brown says.

He aims to increase Arecibo's utility to off-site users. Brown succeeds Paul Goldsmith, the J. A. Weeks professor in the physical sciences at Cornell, who stepped down last month to return to full-time research and teaching.

Transitions

Last December, Leif Hamø was appointed chief financial officer at TopoTarget Prolifix, a biotech firm in Copenhagen. Hamø joins the company from Danish credit and finance firm AcceptFinans, where he was chief executive.

Dendreon of Seattle last month appointed Israel Rios as vice-president of clinical affairs. Rios joins the firm from Berlex Laboratories, the US affiliate of Schering, Germany, where he most recently served as vice-president of oncology development.

Barbara Domayne-Hayman is to join London-based Arrow Therapeutics, as commercial director; she will move from Celltech where she is currently senior business-development manager.

Renovis, a South San Francisco biotech company, last month brought on John Doyle as vice-president of finance and chief financial officer; Jacob Huff as vice-president of clinical development; Michael Kelly as senior director of chemistry; John Kollins as vice-president of business development; and Paula Serbin as vice-president of human resources.

Astex Technology, a drug-discovery company based in Cambridge, UK, last month appointed David Rees as director of medicinal chemistry. Rees comes from AstraZeneca, in Mölndal, Sweden, where he was director and head of the medicinal chemistry department.

Last month Oxford drug-discovery company Etiologics appointed Ian Kent as chairman. Kent has helped to start several biotech firms including Ardana Biosciences of Edinburgh, UK.