Research!America announces new board member and board chair
Gifted researcher Mary Hendrix and former congressional leader John Porter
April 1, 2005 - Research!America recently announced that Mary J.C. Hendrix, PhD, president and scientific director of Children's Memorial Research Center at Northwestern University in Chicago, has been elected as a new member of the Research!America Board. Research!America is the nation's leading not-for-profit, public education and advocacy alliance working to make medical and health research a higher national priority.
"We look forward, also, to Dr. Hendrix's participation and know she will make substantial contributions predicated on her distinguished career as a researcher and a research advocate," said Mary Woolley, Research!America president and CEO.
Dr. Mary J.C. Hendrix has been an outspoken and courageous advocate on behalf of scientific research, the need for collaboration between academic, government and industry sectors, and the need for increased investment in medical research. She has served in a number of important scientific leadership positions, including professor and head of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, deputy director of the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center, and president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Hendrix assumed the presidency of Children's Memorial Research Center in 2004. She currently serves on the National Advisory Council for the Human Genome Research Institute and the Board of Scientific Advisors for the National Cancer Institute.
Research!America also announced the Honorable John Edward Porter as chair of its Board of Directors. Porter served 21 years as a Congressman from Illinois' 10th District. Former U.S. House Representative John Edward Porter served on the Appropriations Committee, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, and in other distinguished leadership roles in Congress. His dedication to securing unprecedented funding increases for the National Institutes of Health has been a cornerstone of his legislative work, and he has received numerous honors from America's best-known medical research organizations and professional societies. Porter joined the Research!America board in January 2001.
Both Hendrix, who has frequently testified before key committees of the U.S. Congress, and Porter, now a partner in Hogan & Hartson's Washington, DC, office, can be expected to lend their considerable abilities to bolstering Research!America's mission.
Research!America is a 501(c)(3), membership-supported public education and advocacy alliance founded in 1989. Its 500 member institutions, organizations and corporations represent the voices of more than 100 million Americans who want medical and health research-including research to prevent disease, disability and injury and to promote health-to be a much higher national priority. Research!America's public opinion surveys and advocacy-based programs and publications are designed to reach the public and decision makers with messages that support a strong and vibrant research enterprise. For more information on the alliance, visit www.researchamerica.org.
For more information, contact Julie Pesch at 773.880.4500 in Public Affairs & Communications at Children's Memorial Hospital.