The genomics initiative has encountered another setback, despite administrative steps to increase its pace.
Dr. Lewis "Rusty" Williams, Medicine '78, Ph.D. '77, has declined the position of director of the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, and a search committee hopes to fill the position by next fall.
Williams, a member of the University's Board of Trustees and the chief scientific officer for Chiron, Corp., in Emeryville, Calif., emerged over the fall as the top choice for the position.
Although Williams could not be reached for comment, Provost Peter Lange said the candidate decided to stay in California for family reasons, something Williams had previously said would be a key factor.
Lange said he did not think the development would seriously hinder the genomics initiative, as long as a strong director is in place by next fall.
Dr. Patrick Casey, professor of pharmacology and cancer biology, is chairing a search committee to find the IGSP director. The group has been meeting since early September. Casey said Williams' decision was not a serious setback, but a disappointment. "It would have been a nice pre-emptive way to end before we started," he said. "I have incredibly high regard for Rusty. It would have made my job easy."
Casey said an official announcement for the position will appear next Friday, but unofficially, the committee has sought several other individuals. Currently, the group has a list of about 40 people, a list they will shortly narrow to between five and 10 candidates. Of that list, Casey said about 60 to 70 percent are from the academic world, but the rest are either in the private sector or involved in science policy making. Williams had experience in the academic and private sectors--he was a professor at the University of California at San Francisco and Harvard University before becoming chief scientific officer for Chiron.
"[We're looking for] strong leadership qualities, someone who's got a track record of an interdisciplinary approach," Casey said.
He said the director will likely be an expert in the sciences, but did not rule out hiring a policy expert based on the heavy emphasis Duke hopes to place on ethics and policy implications.
The University-wide initiative in genomics was stalled following the departure of former dean of the medical school Dr. Ed Holmes after only 18 months on the job and a year-long search for his replacement.
Currently, two of the IGSP's five centers, the Center for Genome Ethics, Law and Policy and the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, are in the midst of director searches. Dr. Sandy Williams, dean of the School of Medicine, said director searches for the Center for Genome Technology and the Center for Human Disease Models will wait until after an institute director is hired. The Center for Human Genetics already has a permanent director--Margaret Pericak-Vance, prominent Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease researcher and professor of genetics.
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