Brent B. Stanfield, Ph.D., has been named Acting Director of the Center for Scientific Review by Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., Director of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Stanfield will assume his duties on October 1, 2003, following the departure of Dr. Ellie Ehrenfeld. He has served as CSR's Deputy Director since July 2000.

"Dr. Stanfield has worked closely with Dr. Ehrenfeld," says Dr. Zerhouni, "planning, directing, and coordinating CSR's operations. He has also been instrumental in facilitating the reorganization of CSR's peer review committees and I appreciate his willingness to lead CSR through this transition period."

Before coming to CSR, Dr. Stanfield was Director of the Office of Science Policy and Program Planning at the National Institute of Mental Health. He ran the NIMH unit on developmental neuroanatomy in the Laboratory of Neurophysiology between 1987 and 1996. While at NIMH, he spent 8 months at CSR, helping to implement the reorganization of the scientific review groups that review neuroscience grant applications.

Dr. Stanfield received his Ph.D. in neurobiology from Washington University, St. Louis, in 1978. He then held faculty positions at the Salk Institute and the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine before coming to NIMH. He has published over 50 journal articles in his field, focusing many of them on the hippocampal formation and the development of the cerebral cortex. Dr. Stanfield also has served as a member of the Editorial Board of "The Journal of Comparative Neurology" and as an associate editor of "The Journal of Neuroscience".

The Center for Scientific Review organizes the peer review groups that evaluate the majority of grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health. CSR also receives all NIH and many Public Health Service grant applications and assigns them to the appropriate NIH Institutes and Centers and PHS agencies. Additional information on CSR is available on our Web site (http://www.csr.nih.gov) or by calling 301 435-1111.