2012-07-01
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, announced the selection of Gary H. Gibbons, MD, as the next director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute(NHLBI). Dr. Gibbons is the founder and currently serves as director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute, chairperson of the Department of Physiology, and professor of physiology and medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA.
Dr. Gibbons has served as a member of the NHLBI Advisory Council (NHLBAC) since 2009. Prior to being named director, he was also a member of the NHLBI Board of Extramural Experts, a working group of the NHLBAC. As director, Dr. Gibbons will oversee NIH’s third largest Institute, an annual budget of more than $3 billion, and a staff of 917 federal employees. Dr. Gibbons will also direct his own lab at NIH, focusing on predictive health and genomic medicine in minority populations.
Upon earning his undergraduate degree from Princeton University, Dr. Gibbons graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School and went on to complete his residency and a cardiology fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Prior to joining Morehouse School of Medicine in 1999, Dr. Gibbons was a member of the faculty at Stanford University from 1990 to1996 and Harvard Medical School from 1996 to 1999.
Dr. Gibbons’ Cardiovascular Research Institute is preeminent in discovery science related to cardiovascular health of minority populations. He directs research in the fields of vascular biology, genomic medicine, and the pathogenesis of vascular disease, for which he has received several patents for related innovations and 15 NHLBI-supported grants since 1997. His program is involved in collaborations that focus on discovering the functional significance of epigenetic and genomic variations and their potential roles in susceptibility to cardiovascular disease.
Dr. Gibbon’s illustrious career has earned him many honors. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences, awarded the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Minority Faculty Development Fellowship, selected as a Pew Biomedical Scholar by the Pew Charitable Trusts, and recognized as an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association.
Dr. Gibbons is expected to join the NIH leadership team this summer. Dr. Susan Shurin will continue to lead NHLBI as the Institute’s acting director, returning to her position of deputy director of the Institute upon Dr. Gibbons’ arrival.
back to top
