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Cassman assumes QB3 post

Marvin Cassman, PhD, a nationally known innovator and leader in basic science administration, recently began his tenure as director of the Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research.

Cassman, former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) of the National Institutes of Health, will oversee the UCSF Institute's integrative program in physical, mathematical and engineering sciences, the scientific success of which could open the way for attacking a whole host of biological problems and intractable diseases, from brain disorders to diabetes.

Organized around three research and education modules — bioengineering and biotechnology; bioinformatics; and structural and chemical biology — the Institute will focus on developing techniques for storing and analyzing vast quantities of biological information and using imaging and mathematical modeling to view molecules, cells, and single-organ systems as part of functional networks. These technologies will allow scientists to understand interactions and predict outcomes and to reconstruct parts of living systems in the laboratory to improve human health.

A portion of the Institute's 54 laboratories at UCSF also will be housed in 90,000 square feet of Genentech Hall at UCSF Mission Bay, about a mile south of San Francisco's Financial District. Genentech Hall is scheduled to open in early 2003.

The Institute will also occupy an adjoining building containing 92,000 usable square feet that the campus expects to construct by 2004. A native of Chicago, Cassman received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Chicago and a doctoral degree in biochemistry from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York.

Following a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley, Cassman joined the UC Santa Barbara faculty as assistant professor.

In 1975, he joined the National Institutes of Health as a health scientist administrator and has been there since that time, advancing through a series of positions. He became acting director of NIGMS in 1993 and was named director in 1996.

by Mitzi Baker