Other Organizations

Gordon L. Nelson has been named president of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP). Nelson is currently University Professor of Chemistry at Florida Institute of Technology. An international expert in polymer flammability, Nelson was chair of CSSP in 1992 and president of the American Chemical Society in 1988. He succeeds Martin Apple, who led CSSP for nearly 20 years and will now serve as CSSP’s director of research and development. Apple has accepted appointments including those at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education. Focused on developing strong science policy and science leadership, CSSP is a nonprofit organization of presidents of some 60 scientific federations, scientific societies, and science and mathematics education societies.

Erin K. O’Shea, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator at Harvard University, has been named vice president and chief scientific officer of the institute. She will begin her new duties part-time this month and transition to full-time in July. O’Shea will head the institute’s flagship HHMI Investigator Program, in which leading scientists direct Institute laboratories on U.S. campuses in five-year appointments as employees of HHMI. She will also oversee a broad scientific portfolio that includes programs that support early-career scientists worldwide and initiatives that foster innovative, collaborative research. O’Shea will also be responsible for identifying new opportunities that capitalize on the institute’s expertise in biomedical research and science education. She will maintain her lab at Harvard, where she conducts research in gene regulation, signal transduction, and systems biology. She succeeds Jack E. Dixon, who has led HHMI’s scientific programs since 2007. He will return to the University of California, San Diego, to continue his long-standing research on protein tyrosine phosphatases—biochemical master control switches that regulate much of the activity in living cells.

Tyson Popp, vice president of global sourcing and Americas supply chain for West Pharmaceutical Services, has been elected president of the Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association (DCAT). In addition, Lyra Myers, associate director and value creation agent at Genentech, will serve as senior vice president of DCAT. George Svokos, senior vice president of product and portfolio management at Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, will serve as finance officer, and Folker Ruchatz, vice president of global business management custom synthesis at BASF, will serve as vice president of DCAT. All will serve one-year terms.

Joseph Progar, executive vice president of Advanced Urethane Technologies, has been elected to serve as president of the Polyurethane Foam Association. He succeeds Lynn Knudtson of Future Foam. Based in Loudon, Tenn., the Polyurethane Foam Association educates customers and other groups about the environmental, health, and safety issues related to flexible polyurethane foam production. It also provides generic technical information on the performance of flexible polyurethane foam in consumer and industrial products.

Geraldine Richmond, the Richard M. & Patricia H. Noyes Professor of Chemistry & Materials Science at the University of Oregon, is one of four people recently appointed to become members of the National Science Board by President Barack Obama. Other appointees include Deborah Loewenberg Ball, dean of the University of Michigan School of Education; Inez Y. Fung, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of California, Berkeley; and G. Peter Lepage, the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Cornell University. The National Science Board is the governing body for the National Science Foundation. Its members serve as independent advisers to Congress and the President.

Thomas R. Tritton has announced that he will retire from his position as president and chief executive officer of the Chemical Heritage Foundation this year. CHF’s board of directors has formed a committee to lead a global search for Tritton’s successor, to be named by June 30. Tritton became CHF’s second president in 2007.