Marvin Cassman to Leave National Institute of General Medical Sciences to Become First Director of UCSF/s Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research
Available accessResearch articleFirst published online May, 2002
Marvin Cassman to Leave National Institute of General Medical Sciences to Become First Director of UCSF/s Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research
Marvin Cassman, PhD, leaves the director/s post at NIH/s National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to become the first director of the Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Mission Bay campus this month. Dr. Cassman was director of NIGMS since August 1996. Dr. Cassman/s main duties at QB3 will include working to develop policies to encourage researchers to bridge the gap between the physical and life sciences. “This is an exciting opportunity [in the area] of one of my major interests,” he said. As of late February, the NIH had not yet decided whom to name as acting director at NIGMS, and a search committee had not yet been assembled. QB3 was established to focus on areas such as bioengineering, structural biology, bioinformatics, and the analysis of complex biological systems. UCSF is partnering in the venture with the Berkeley and Santa Cruz campuses of the University of California. California state funds totaling $100 spanning 5 years have been promised for construction on all three campuses. For every $1 of state funding, QB3 will have to raise $2 from outside sources, mainly from private donors. Dr. Cassman/s honors and awards include the 1991 Presidential Meritorious Executive Rank Award and the 1983 NIH Director/s Award. He is a member of the Protein Society and the American Chemical Society. He joined the NIGMS in 1975 as a health scientist administrator in the Cellular and Molecular Basis of Disease Program. Before that, he was a member of the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Cassman completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Howard Schachman at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his doctoral degree in biochemistry from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and holds a master/s degree from the University of Chicago.
