Friday, August 27, 1999

HUNTER-CEVERA NAMED UMBI PRESIDENT

BALTIMORE, MD--Jennie Hunter-Cevera, Ph.D., microbiologist and ecologist in the growing field of environmental biotechnology, has been named the second president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI), by the University System of Maryland.

Since 1994, Hunter-Cevera has directed the Department of Environmental Biology and Biochemistry for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), which is operated by the University of California as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) national laboratory system.

"I look forward to working with a great team that will lead Maryland's academic and industrial biotechnology programs into the next millennium," says Hunter-Cevera, who will begin her new position in October. "UMBI is a model of excellence for doing basic science in several areas of biotechnology," she says.

J. Stark Thompson, president and CEO of Life Technologies Inc. of Rockville, Maryland says, "Jennie Hunter-Cevera is a remarkable individual who has the right combination of talents to lead the unique venture that is UMBI: strong academic skills, expertise in fundraising and government relations, and good solid experience in industry." Thompson was head of the search committee that unanimously recommended Hunter-Cevera for the UMBI presidency.

Hunter-Cevera replaces founding president Rita R. Colwell, Ph.D., who left UMBI in 1998 to become director of the National Science Foundation. Peter P. McCann, former president of the U.S. subsidiary of British Biotech Inc., has served as interim president since August 1998.

In her career, Hunter-Cevera, 51, has made significant contributions to many of the major areas of science that make up UMBI's research and education agenda. The Institute is a hub of scientific work in human health, the marine environment, agriculture, and protein engineering/structural biology.

In recent years, Hunter-Cevera has directed much of her research and leadership toward enhancing the scientific and educational value of microbial biodiversity. She is committed to biodiversity because natural products can provide solutions to many biotechnical problems, she says, from therapeutic drug development to polluted site cleanups.

For example, Hunter-Cevera is principal investigator of two DOE cooperative programs with Ukrainian institutes to screen rare botanical and microbial extracts throughout the former Soviet Union, including a site at Chernobyl. Where radiation exposure has altered soil microbes, she says, researchers aided by robotics can isolate products with market potential including new classes of antibiotics or new drugs that perhaps would be active against cancer.

Hunter-Cevera was recently appointed to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Genetic Resources Advisory Board. At USDA's Beltsville (MD) international symposium, "Global Genetic Resources," in 1996, she emphasized "microorganisms' metabolic role in providing therapeutics for health and products and processes that improve our lifestyle, as well as their diverse role in the environment." She added that because scientists have only isolated less than one percent of nature's microbes, "one can only imagine the array of novel compounds and enzymes waiting to be 'conjured up' for new applications."

In 1994, Hunter-Cevera established the Center for Environmental Biotechnology at the LBNL. She shaped the Center's mission and vision by applying a combination of chemistry, biology, and physics to find new solutions to environmental pollution.

As an LBNL department head, she is responsible for a multi-million dollar operation, directing multiple scientific disciplines into research on the molecular evolution of organisms from environmentally damaged sites, the health risks associated with environmental toxins, soil and groundwater structure and function, and the monitoring of biological systems in recovery.

Hunter-Cevera received a B.A. degree in biology from West Virginia University in 1970 where she also received a master's degree in microbiology in 1972. She received a doctoral degree in microbiology from Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1978.

She began her career at E.R. Squibb in Princeton, NJ as a researcher involved in the isolation of microorganisms from nature and assay development for antibiotic discovery. From 1980 to 1990, she was at the Cetus Corporation in Emeryville, CA. In 1990, she started a consulting company specializing in biotechnology, agricultural and industrial microbiology, bioremediation and pharmaceuticals.

On her new challenge, Hunter-Cevera says, "There are strong foundations of basic science in the five centers (of UMBI) ripe for integration and moving towards collaborative interactions with industry for product development."

The five centers are the Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology in Rockville; the Center for Agricultural Biotechnology in College Park; and the Center of Marine Biotechnology, the Institute of Human Virology, and the Medical Biotechnology Center, all in Baltimore. The Maryland General Assembly established UMBI in 1985.

Thompson, who also chairs UMBI's board of visitors, added: "Jennie is joining an institution that was the vision of an extraordinary person in Rita Colwell, and that thrived under the strong leadership of Peter McCann after Rita departed. There really is excellent science being practiced in every corner of UMBI."