Jeremy Berg, director of
Biophysics and
Biophysical Chemistry and director of the Institute for
Basic Biomedical Sciences at the School of Medicine, has
been appointed director of the National Institute for
General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of
Health. He is expected to begin in early November.
His appointment, announced Aug. 27 by NIH director
Elias Zerhouni, recognizes Berg's long-standing
contributions to basic research and administration,
according to comments by Zerhouni and Tommy Thompson,
secretary of the Department of Health and Human
Services.
Edward D. Miller, dean of
the medical faculty and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine,
said, "For 18 years, Jeremy has been a valuable member of
the Johns Hopkins community, as a researcher, teacher and
administrator. While his abilities and perspective will be
sorely missed here, the nation will benefit from his
leadership at the NIGMS."
As NIGMS director, Berg will oversee a $1.8 billion
budget that funds basic research in the areas of cell
biology, biophysics, genetics, developmental biology,
pharmacology, physiology, biological chemistry,
bioinformatics and computational biology. NIGMS currently
supports more than 4,400 research grants--about 10 percent
of the grants funded by NIH as a whole. NIGMS also supports
a substantial amount of research training as well as
programs designed to increase the number of minority
biomedical scientists.
"I'm excited about the opportunities ahead of me,"
Berg said last week. "I've been committed to the support of
basic science at Hopkins, and I will have a great
opportunity to advocate for the importance of fundamental
research on a national scale."
Prior to his appointment as professor and director of
Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry in 1990, Berg was an
assistant professor of chemistry in the Krieger School of
Arts and Sciences. Berg holds bachelor's and master's
degrees in chemistry from Stanford and received his
doctorate in chemistry from Harvard in 1985. He spent two
years as a postdoctoral fellow in Biophysics with Carl Pabo
at the School of Medicine.
Over the past two decades, Berg's training as an
inorganic chemist combined with a profound interest in
biology has aided his creation of an active research
program in understanding zinc-fingers--small domains of
proteins that bind zinc and interact with other
biomolecules, such as DNA. These domains, among the most
common encoded by the human genome, participate in many
biological processes, particularly control of gene
expression. His research uses nuclear magnetic resonance
spectroscopy, X-ray crystallography and molecular modeling,
among other tools, to evaluate the structural,
thermodynamic and kinetic aspects of these proteins.
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