February 5, 2004

Morimoto named to national advisory medical sciences council

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson has appointed Richard Morimoto, associate provost and dean of The Graduate School, to the National Advisory General Medical Sciences Council.

Richard Morimoto

The council is composed of leaders in the biological and medical sciences, education, health care and public affairs. Council members, who are appointed for four-year terms, perform the second level of peer review for research and research training grant applications assigned to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, one of the National Institutes of Health.

Council members also offer advice and recommendations on policy and program development,
program implementation, evaluation and other matters of significance to the missions and goals of the national institute.

Morimoto will step down as associate provost and dean at the end of this academic year to return to full-time research and teaching in the department of biochemistry, molecular biology and cell biology, where he previously served as chair. He will continue his activities as the John Evans Professor of Molecular Biology and director of the Rice Institute for Biomedical Research.

He will continue his work on the molecular biology of protein quality control and cellular stress responses. This research is of central importance to the understanding of diseases of protein conformation, including Huntington’s disease, ALS and Parkinson’s disease.

During his deanship Morimoto received a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health.