MEDIA CONTACT: Elizabeth Crown at 312-503-8928 or e-crown@northwestern.edu

March 29, 2005

Hendrix Elected to Board of Health Advocacy Group

CHICAGO --- Mary J. C. Hendrix, president and scientific director of Children’s Memorial Research Center at Northwestern University, has been elected to the board of directors of Research!America, one of the nation’s leading not-for-profit, public education and advocacy alliances working to make medical and health research a higher national priority.

Hendrix, a highly honored scientist who assumed the presidency of Children’s Memorial Research Center in 2004, is professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of medicine and a member of the executive committee of The Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.

Hendrix has been an outspoken and courageous advocate on behalf of scientific research, the need for collaboration between academic, government and industry sectors and the need for increased investment in medical research. She has testified on several scientific and medical ethics issues before key committees of the U.S. Congress.

Hendrix has served in a number of important scientific leadership positions, including professor and head of the department of anatomy and cell biology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, deputy director of the Holden Comprehensive Cancer and president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

She currently serves on the National Advisory Council for the Human Genome Research Institute and the Board of Scientific Advisors for the National Cancer Institute.

“We look forward to Dr. Hendrix’s participation and know she will make substantial contributions predicated on her distinguished career as a researcher and a research advocate,” said Mary Wooley, Research!America president and chief executive officer.

Established in 1986 as a formalized basic science research program, Children’s Memorial Research Center is the research arm of Children’s Memorial Hospital, the pediatric teaching hospital for Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and one of 13 interdisciplinary research centers and institutes of Feinberg.