Vice dean for research to join AAMC David A. Blake, executive vice dean and vice dean for research at the School of Medicine, has been named senior vice president for research at the Association of American Medical Colleges. He will join the association full time on July 1. At the AAMC, Blake will lead the association's efforts to enhance the effectiveness of research activities in the nation's medical schools and teaching hospitals, bolster the participation of medical school faculty in the leadership and policy development of the association, and coordinate a comprehensive evaluation of the size and job opportunities of the biomedical-Ph.D. community, among other activities. Michael E. Johns, dean of the School of Medicine, said Blake will be missed at Hopkins, but "it gives me great pleasure to know that Dave's counsel and leadership will now be exercised on the national level. We in the biomedical research community will continue to call on him for an almost unsurpassed body of knowledge and expertise." Blake has been an educator, investigator and leader at Hopkins for 22 years. An extensively published pharmacologist, he has served on numerous research panels and is as a member of the American Society of Pharmacology/Experimental Therapeutics and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "I consider this to be a capstone appointment for a research administration career," he said of his new post. "With the real fruits of biomedical discovery beginning to emerge from initiatives such as the Human Genome Project, medical schools and national organizations such as the AAMC will be called on to a greater extent in the future ... to explain what they are doing and why. We will have to explain the profound social, ethical and economic issues that are attendant to these discoveries. I look forward to being part of that process."