Five Join NIDDK Advisory Council

From left to right: David H. Perlmutter, M.D., David M. Klurfeld, Ph.D., Juanita Lynne Merchant, M.D., Ph.D., Mitchell A. Lazar, M.D., Ph.D., Griffin P. Rodgers, M.D., Acting Director, NIDDK, and Margery Deutz Perry. Photo credit: NIDDK.

Five new members have been named to the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). The body serves both to guide the NIDDK’s discussion of broad science policy issues and to provide second-level review of funding requests. The new members, who will serve until 2009, are:

David M. Klurfeld, Ph.D.: Klurfeld serves the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a national program leader in human nutrition in the Agricultural Research Service, where he oversees research designed to define the role of food and its constituents in optimizing health. Klurfeld will serve as an ex-officio member of the Advisory Council and will attend meetings of the Digestive Diseases and Nutrition Subcommittee.

Mitchell A. Lazar, M.D., Ph.D.: Lazar is a Sylvan H. Eisnman Professor of Medicine and Genetics and chief of the division of endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, and he directs the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Lazar, whose research focuses on obesity-associated insulin resistance, joins the Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Diseases Subcommittee.

Juanita Lynne Merchant, M.D., Ph.D.: A professor of internal medicine and molecular and integrative physiology at the University of Michigan, Merchant studies the use of animal and cell culture models to better understand how bacterial colonization in the gastrointestinal tract can lead to ulcers and cancer. She joins the Digestive Diseases and Nutrition Subcommittee.

David H. Perlmutter, M.D.: Perlmutter is the Vira I. Heinz Professor and chair of pediatrics and professor of cell biology and physiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and the scientific director of the John G. Rangos Sr. Research Center and physician-in-chief at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Perlmutter studies liver disease, including work on alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency, the most common genetic cause of liver disease in children. Perlmutter joins the Digestive Diseases and Nutrition Subcommittee.

Margery Deutz Perry: The past chair of research at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) International, Perry oversaw both the development and implementation of JDRF’s research goals and priorities. In addition, she supervised and approved all aspects of JDRF’s research programs. Perry joins the Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Diseases Subcommittee.

NIH Publication No. 06–4531
July 2006