Two Medical School Professors Appointed to High-Level Government Research Posts

Naomi Fukagawa, professor of medicine at the University of Vermont, was named director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland. In this post she will oversee 100 federal scientists and 50 visiting scientists and manage an annual budget of $22 million.

Dr. Fukagawa will resign from her faculty position to devote her full attention to her new government job. She has served on the faculty at the University of Vermont for 20 years. Professor Fukagawa earned her medical degree at Northwestern University. She holds a Ph.D. in nutritional biochemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sarah Hollingsworth “Holly” Lisanby, the J.P. Gibbons Professor of Psychiatry and chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine, was named director of the Division of Translational Research for the National Institute of Mental Health. She will step down from her post as department chair and take a leave of absence from the faculty in order to assume her new post this coming fall.

Dr. Lisanby joined the Duke faculty in 2010 after teaching at Columbia University in New York City. She holds bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and psychology and a medical degree from Duke University.