Alan R. Saltiel, a cell biologist who is one of the world’s leading authorities on insulin and diabetes, has been named the John Jacob Abel Collegiate Professor in the Life Sciences and Associate Director of the Life Sciences Institute at the University of Michigan. As Associate Director of LSI, Prof. Saltiel will be assisting Institute Director Jack Dixon with the scientific leadership activities for the Institute, including recruitment of other scientists. The Institute is slated to be complete in September, 2003. “I am thrilled and honored for this opportunity,” Saltiel said. “This Institute is more than a building; it’s about synergy and collaboration, and bringing people together from different disciplines to solve common problems.” Saltiel is a tenured professor of Internal Medicine in the Medical School with a joint appointment in the Physiology Department. He was the first researcher hired for the Institute under Dixon’s leadership in March, 2001. “I’m delighted that Alan is willing to step up to this role as our Associate Director because we’re about to turn up the heat on our recruiting efforts,” Dixon said. “His broad connections within both the academic and industrial research communities will be very helpful to us.” “Alan, Liz Barry (LSI Managing Director) and I will be working hard in the coming year to pull together our core faculty and get this building on line,” Dixon said. “I am really excited about the way the leadership team is coming together.” The LSI’s new collegiate professorship is named for John Jacob Abel, a University of Michigan professor in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries who is considered the father of American pharmacology. Abel was a graduate of Michigan who was the first professor of pharmacology in the U.S. in 1891 and founded Michigan’s Department of Pharmacology. Professor Saltiel earlier received the John Jacob Abel Award from the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. Prior to being appointed to the Life Sciences Institute, he was the senior director of the Department of Cell Biology and a distinguished research fellow in the Department of Signal Transduction at Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research Division, Warner Lambert Company (now Pfizer Global Research). He is the author of more than 190 articles and essays. Life Sciences Institute
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