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Proceedings of the Sixty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences

Posted on: Monday, 26 September 2005, 18:00 CDT

By Anonymous

San Diego, CA

April 1-5, 2005

COUNCIL MEETING

The Council of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences (ASNS) met on Saturday, April 1 (Kathleen Rasmussen, presiding). Following are the actions taken by Council:

Adopted the symposia program (as approved by the Program Committee) for 2006.

Approved unanimously the Membership Committee actions.

Received and approved the Finance Committee report.

Received the Tellers' report and confirmed the Council composition for 2005-2006. President: Dennis Bier; Past President: Kathleen Rasmussen; President-Elect: Joanne Lupton; Treasurer: Denise Ney; Secretary: Susan Fried; ASCN Representative: Janet King; SINR Representative: Rebecca Stoltzfus; Councilors: Teresa Davis, Gretel Pelto, Jack Odle.

SCIENTIFIC AND SPECIAL SESSIONS

Seven corporate societies of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) met in San Diego, CA for the Experimental Biology 2005 meeting. ASNS programmed 1290 abstracts for presentation in 48 minisymposia, 77 poster sessions, 1 Procter & Gamble Graduate Student Award Special Session, the ASCN Young Investigator Award Special Session, and 3 additional Special Sessions. There were 14 major Symposia; 4 Presidential Lectures (including the Atwater Lecture); 4 additional Award Lectures; 4 Conferences; and 1 Workshop-for a total of 1 57 sessions. The following sessions, reviewed by the Program Committee, were presented:

Symposia

PhenHRIG 8th Annual Symposium. Chairs: M. Gross and P. Bowen

Nutrients, Nuclear Receptors, Inflammation and Immunity. Chairs: C. B. Stephensen and M. Cantorna

Food Assistance Programs and Well-Being of Low-Income Families. Chairs: S. Jones and E. Frongillo

Calcium-Related Chronic Diseases in Ethnic Minorities: Can Dairy Consumption Reduce Health Disparities? Chair: J. Nicholls

Molecular Actions of Botanicals and Dietary Supplements. Chair: N. F. Shay

Historical Contributions of Isotopes to the Understanding of Nutrient Metabolism. Chair: D. M. Bier

Optimizing Vitamin D Intake for Populations with Special Needs: Barriers to Effective Food Fortification and Supplementation. Chairs: M. S. Calvo and S. J. Whiting

Individualized Nutrition as a Tool to Prevent and Treat Chronic Disease. Chairs: J. Dwyer and L. Hoolihan

ASNS/ASCN Public Information Committee Symposium: The Food Label Debate: Dietary Reference Intakes for Food Labeling. Chairs: V. Fulgoni III and G.D. Miller

Nutritional Needs for the Development, Maintenance, and Use of an Immune System. Chairs: K. C. Klasing and S. N. Meydani

Conjugated Linoleic Acid: Implications for Mammary Growth, Development and Function. Chairs: M. McGuire and M. Neville

N-3 Fatty Acids, Transitioning from Research to Education. Chairs: N. M. Lewis, B. Lohse, and C. Geiger

Nutritional OMICS Technologies for Elucidating the Roles of Bioactive Food Components in Colon Cancer Prevention. Chairs: C. D. Davis and N. Hord

Food Fortification in Developing Countries. Chairs: J. Haas and D. Miller

Lectures

ASNS Presidential Lecture. Lecturer: D. J. Mangelsdorf

ASCN Presidential Lecture. Lecturer: A. M. Spiegel

The W. O. Atwater Memorial Lecture. Lecturer: D. A. Schoeller

SINR Presidential Lecture. Lecturer: R. Uauy-Dagach

Conferences

29th National Nutrient Databank Conference

ILSI North America Functional Foods Conference. Chair: J. Milner

CARIG Conference. Chairs: J. Mares, W. White, A. During, and E. Johnson

Carnitine Conference. Chair: P. Borum

Workshop

Assessing the Health Effects of Bioactive Food Components. Chairs: L. Saldanha and P. Coates

On Saturday afternoon, April 2, the ASNS/Procter & Gamble Graduate Student Research Awards oral competition session was held. The 12 winners of the graduate student abstract competition, selected in December 2004, presented their papers. The session was chaired by the ASNS senior Councilor, Joanne Lupton. Travel awards of $750 were given to the 12 winners of the abstract competition, and additional awards of $500 were presented to the 3 winners of the oral competition. The 12 winners of the abstract competition were:

Giana Angelo, JM USDA HNRC on Aging at Tufts University

Advisor: Richard Wood

Nick Bellissimo, University of Toronto

Advisor: G. Harvey Anderson

Laureen Lui Yan Chan, The University of Hong Kong

Advisor: Edmund T. S. Li

Soonkyu Chung, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Advisor: Michael McIntosh

Janette Harkins, Michigan State University

Advisor: Kate J. Claycombe

Penni Davila Hicks, University of California at Davis

Advisor: Bo Lonnerdal

Jiyoung Kim, Tufts University

Advisor: Amy Yee

Jerry Pinghwa Pian, University of Kentucky

Advisor: Linda Chen

David Scott, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Advisor: George Loo

Jeongmin Seo, Texas A&M University

Advisor: Robert Chapkin

Alexia Smith, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Advisor: Rosalind Coleman

Kader Yagiz, Purdue University

Advisor: Dorothy Morr

This year, once again, the ASNS, in concert with its Graduate Nutrition Education Committee (chaired by Carol Lammi-Keefe), administered the Predoctoral Fellowship Program. Fifty-five proposals were submitted for this competition. The 6 available fellowships (each for $5000) were awarded as follows:

Mary Yeh from Emory University (Advisor: Lou Ann Brown) won the Cargill Fellowship for her proposal: Assessing the effects of pulmonary oxidant imbalance on alveolar macrophage function and determining the potential of restoring glutathione in chronic alcoholics.

Nadine Tassabehji from Florida State University (Advisor; Cathy Levenson) received the Gerber Foundation Fellowship for her proposal: The role of zinc deficiency and supplementation on hippocampal neurogenesis.

Kristin Nieman from Iowa State University (Advisor: Kevin Schalinske) won the Kraft Foods Fellowship for the proposal: Perturbation of methyl group and homocysteine metabolism by diabetes.

David S. Paul from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Advisor: Miroslav Styblo) received the Mars Fellowship for his proposal: Arsenic interferes with glucose homeostasis: Mechanism of arsenic-induced type-2 diabetes.

Rahul Rawat from Cornell University (Advisor: Rebecca Stoltzfus) was awarded the McNeil Nutritionals Fellowship for his winning proposal: Determining safe and efficacious iron supplementation to HIV-infected women with iron deficiency anemia (IDA).

Yue Li from the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign (Advisor: Manabu Nakamura) received the Wyeth Consumer Healthcare Fellowship for her proposal: Peroxisome proliferators-activated receptor α (PPARα) regulation of highly unsaturated fatty acid synthesis- determine endogenous PPARα ligand under essential fatty acid deficiency.

BUSINESS MEETING

The annual business meeting of the Society was held on Monday, April 4, 2005 with Kathleen Rasmussen presiding. President Rasmussen welcomed the membership to the 77th business meeting of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences.

The agenda was adopted.

Approval of the Proceedings of the 68th annual meeting as published in the September 2004 issue of The Journal of Nutrition (Vol. 134, No. 9) was passed by voice vote.

President's report-Kathleen Rasmussen

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to call this meeting to order. I am Kathy Rasmussen, President of ASNS. I'd like to note as we begin that we have a conflict this evening. In fact we have two of them. One is between the beginning of the SINR business meeting and the other is with the tipoff of the Final Four. The blue that I am wearing is not taking a position.

I would like to introduce Chuck Nolan. We have a Parliamentarian who is with us this evening to my right.

I'd like to begin by calling for adoption of the agenda, which you received on your way in the door, and approval of the Proceedings from the 68th annual meeting last year as printed in The Journal of Nutrition. Hearing no objection we will accept these by unanimous consent.

The next item on our agenda is the President's report, and in my presentation to you last year I spoke of the challenges and opportunities that I thought faced ASNS. In addition to offering ideas of smaller things that I thought we could do in the coming year, I described the opportunity that I thought existed to develop a better nutrition society. It would be an understatement to say that this work has been a major focus of my efforts and those of many others in this past year. As a consequence of this and to permit as much time as possible for comments and questions about this topic in our tight agenda, I will devote my President's report to this subject alone. I would like to begin by describing the process by which we have come to this point; then I will discuss the proposal upon which you will be asked to vote and let you know how this vote will occur.

This effort actually began 2 years ago when Steve Zeisel, then ASNS President, charged the Presidents-Elect of ASNS and its divisions with considering what could be done to improve their interrelationships with one another. Sam Klein, Becky Stoltzfus, and I considered this issue carefully and, at our October 2003 Joint Council meetings, we reported that a real solution to the dilemmas we saw probably required a reorganization of our societies. Moreover, we felt that such a reorganization a\lso could address a number of other concerns. The Councils agreed that this was worth considering more carefully and created the Guiding Coalition to do so and charged it with providing some options for Council consideration. The Guiding Coalition then developed a more thorough situation analysis, which was published in the September 2004 issue of Nutrition Notes. This documented the motivation for considering this kind of change.

Both ASNS and ASCN describe themselves as being premier societies in nutrition research. Yet in a time of high interest in nutrition, our membership is not growing. The difference between the two societies is not clear to much of our external audience, and thus it is not clear which society should be called for expert advice on a particular subject or which society deserves a donor's financial support. In fact, ASNS and ASCN are more alike than different and have become more alike over the years. So the confusion is understandable. Both societies contain interests which range from basic to translational research in nutrition. In fact our common ground is a strong reason for consolidation. You have heard from me several times in my columns for Nutrition Notes about the challenging environment we face as a society that publishes a scientific journal. Finally, we have continued to experience the administrative problems that result from the peculiar structural relationship between ASNS and ASCN, which have existed since ASCN's founding several decades ago. As many of you know, ASCN is both an independent scientific society and a division of ASNS. All ASCN members are also members of ASNS, which complicates the relationship between the societies.

You saw the first result of the deliberation of the Guiding Coalition at this meeting last year. Some of you hated its proposal; some of you liked it. I am grateful for the anonymous postdoctoral fellow from NIH who called it a millennial idea.

The Guiding Coalition understood from the reception given to this proposal that it was a start but it was not yet ready for prime time. The Guiding Coalition then went back to the proverbial drawing board and developed another and better proposal, which it presented to the November 2004 Joint Council meeting. The Councils liked this proposal and thought that it was worth developing all the way to new bylaws and a vote of the membership as soon as practical. To carry this out, they created the Joint Council Advisory Group, which includes Denny Bier, Sharon Donovan, and me from ASNS; Sam Klein, Naomi Fukagawa, and Ronenn Roubenoff from ASCN; and Becky Stoltzfus and Grace Marquis from SINK.

The Joint Council Advisory Group posted the proposal on the newly dedicated website in January 2005 and invited all members to view and comment on it either directly to the Joint Council Advisory Group or publicly via an electronic bulletin board on the website. In response to the comments it received, the Joint Council Advisory Group revised the proposal in early March and posted this revised version along with the proposed revised bylaws on this same website. You were invited to view this site once again, and our e-mail indicates that many of you have done so. We also provided a question- and-answer session for you just 2 days ago on Saturday. So now I'd like to draw your attention to some of the key elements of the proposal.

Let's begin with the vision that the Councils have for this new society. This new society will be the leading nutrition research society dedicated to improving the health and well-being of individuals and populations worldwide. This comes with a rather longer mission statement than is on the website. The new society would have a structure that is both similar to and different from ASNS at the present. It would have an Executive Board, which would be supported by a staff led by an Executive Officer. The Executive Board would be responsible for the committees and various scientific elements of the society. The scientific elements would include scientific councils-everyone would belong to at least one of these- and research interest sections (RISs), which would include only some of the members and could reflect interests that cross-cut those of the scientific councils. These RISs would be analogous to the RISs in ASNS today.

Now let's look at some of this in greater detail. The Joint Council Advisory Group is proposing to adopt the model currently used by ASCN, which provides a longer period of engagement for the person who will be President. It's still a 1-year term as President. The governing structure also explicitly includes the scientific interests of the members. All members will join at least 1 scientific council, so that everyone will have a home that is smaller than the society as a whole. We will start with at least 3 of these scientific councils and expect that this number will grow over time. The size of these councils is also arbitrary, as it is unknown how you will choose to distribute yourselves among them when they are available. The scientific councils could not be separately incorporated societies, which would eliminate the major structural problem in the current relationship between ASNS and ASCN. In addition, both the councils and the RIS groups will be electing voting members of the Executive Board. The Joint Council Advisory Group proposes to expand the current criteria for membership and thus expand our membership. In addition, we will preserve all current awards and retain the RISs as I indicated. They've had a strong role in programming Experimental Biology, which we will retain, and we are proposing to improve their link to the governing structure. The size of the RIS groups will vary, and the relationships between RISs and elements of the society can take many forms-within a scientific council, between scientific councils, among scientific councils, having joint membership among them, sort of half in and half out of the new structure-which is how the International Society for Research on Milk and Lactation currently functions.

In this proposal, the Joint Council Advisory Group has eliminated duplicate committees and tried to identify places of synergy by, for example, combining the graduate and professional education committees. ASCN and ASNS can be proud of their two fine journals, and this proposal would preserve their unique character and editorial independence. The management of the new society would look for opportunities for savings that could accrue from the joint fiscal management of these publications. All of these changes that I have described here have financial implications for the proposed society; obligatory expenses would be reduced, and having multiple journals with different target audiences would afford us some buffer in today's difficult publishing environment.

The Guiding Coalition employed a financial consultant, John Rice, who has long experience with FASEB societies, to provide an estimate of the kinds of costs and savings that might accrue from consolidation. After one-time costs, he estimated that a savings of $200,000 would be realized. These savings could be used to reduce operating costs or deployed to provide desired services to members.

Thus, overall, the Councils feel that for both ASNS and ASCN, consolidation of our two societies offers improvement over our current situation. This is true in terms of what we will be able to accomplish toward our shared vision of being the leading nutrition society dedicated to improving the health and well-being of individuals and populations worldwide as well as our financial ability to achieve this vision.

I recognize that this proposal is controversial and some of you oppose it. From the comments that I have heard and the others that the Joint Advisory Group has received, I also recognize that many of you find this to be something worth supporting. For those of you who wonder if this would work if we approved it, I have good news to report. In nearly every instance in which ASNS and ASCN have had to cooperate this year, as well as in some instances where teamwork was not required, (but certainly was desirable), I have observed a positive spirit of cooperation that gives me great optimism for the future. I know that we have it in us to work together for the betterment of nutrition research in this country. I hope that you will give the Councils' proposal for consolidation your careful and thoughtful consideration as a way to achieve our goals.

To give the greatest number of our members the opportunity to vote on this proposal, the Councils have elected to use a mail ballot so that you will not be asked to vote on this proposal during this meeting. The vote will be on the proposed bylaws with an accompanying ballot to determine the name of the new society. The ballot will provide you with a copy of the bylaws on which you will vote as there are likely to me some minor changes before the vote. We encourage you to provide your very best ideas for names for the new society to any member of the Joint Council Advisory Group.

I would like to end with a note of thanks. ASNS could not have accomplished as much as it has this year without the hard work of many of you. I would particularly like to acknowledge our Council, the Guiding Coalition, and the Joint Council Advisory Group for service above and beyond the call of duty. Not only has this year demanded a lot from its members, it has also demanded a lot from the fine staff of ASNS office led by Dick Allison. Speaking for myself and on your behalf, I thank them sincerely.

As I noted last year, ASNS exists to provide its members a way of sharing their interests and expertise in the science of nutrition with one another and the world. It is essential for our long-term future that we make changes to our organization if we are to be able to continue to achieve our scientific goals. As one person noted on Saturday, in addition to w\hat we might want to preserve, we need to adapt, evolve, and grow.

In developing the proposal on which you will soon be asked to vote, the Councils wanted a structure that was flexible and would be able to meet the unique needs of our various scientific subgroups. We also wanted to develop a society that would be recognized by the outside world as the voice of nutrition researchers in the United States. The Councils felt that by restructuring we would have a society of greater vitality, strength, and unity, and, as a result we would all be better able to achieve our goals as nutrition researchers.

Again, I thank you for giving me exciting and challenging opportunities as your president. It has been my privilege to serve you this year.

The floor is now open for 15 minutes, during which you may make comments or ask questions. To permit as many people as possible to speak during this short period, please limit your comments to 2 minutes. The Parliamentarian has a timer. I will recognize opposing points of view in turn. If you wish to speak, please come to the microphone and identify yourself when it is your turn. There is one microphone in the front center aisle.

John Suttie: For 2000 people, we do not need 3 governing structures. So I think that we should have one society. I have a major concern with the current plan in that it does not tell us what the Councils are going to do. If the Councils are a mechanism for seeking input from people with certain expertise that then will be acted upon and disseminated by the governing structure, I think that is fine. If the Councils are going to maintain the same degree of independence that the current divisions do, I don't think we have made a step anywhere. I think we are right where we are today. So I think it will be very helpful if, before you ask people to vote, you clearly define what a Council is in terms of what ability they have to do things on their own and what ability they have to furnish expertise and input into the broader society that then speaks as one society, not as a part of one society.

Kathleen Rasmussen: We will work on that. I do note that the fundraising would be handled centrally and that the funds for the activities of the Councils would be distributed centrally. That would help a little, but I still take your point. You are not happy with that. We will respond to that.

Robert Olson: I feel like Senator Byrd addressing the U.S. Senate. As you know, for the past 2 days I have been making speeches opposing this merger because I think the very point which John Suttie has made about what the Councils are going to do applies very specifically to the American Society for Clinical Nutrition. We have been an organization that basically is autonomous, was incorporated before it was included in the AIN as a division, and has run its own business with its own journal, with its own funds, and with the support of a variety of biologists, 100% of them physicians to start with and more recently human nutritionists. I visualize this merger as primarily a device to destroy the ASCN as an autonomous unit and become a council with unknown powers. It is clear from the discussion you have given today that the governing council (the Executive Board) will be the council in charge; you will receive the funds; you will dispose monies as you please; the composition will change from time to time, but there will be more stability, as you point out; and the question is, how will the American Society of Clinical Nutrition or its remnant, operating as a council, be able to improve clinical investigation of nutritional problems, either with physicians or Ph.D.s? Another disturbing point in your proposal is to actually reduce the research potential of this organization by admitting physicians with no research record and biologists without a Ph.D. degree. That means to me that you are diluting the society to improve politics but to decrease science.

Kevin Fritsche, chair of the Joint Membership Committee: We had a committee meeting this morning. We discussed this proposal as a committee and are supportive of the efforts to do something to address the lack of growth of this organization. The committee at this time believes that it would be in the best interests of the organization to actually open up our membership to people who don't necessarily have a Ph.D. degree or an M.D. We believe we should maintain the 3 different categories where there are full members and associate members and student members and that the associate membership category would be opened up to people with interests in nutrition research but not necessarily advanced degrees. We feel that the organization would not be weakened but, in fact, would be invigorated by the increased participation. The structure of the society could include mechanisms to protect and promote the core research mission of this organization. Some examples of potential members might be lab technicians.

Nancy Loo: I can't agree more with the previous speaker. I am looking at some data that I picked up at the door and I see that the regular membership is actually declining. I have been a member of ASNS for 20 years. I know that the philosophy of the organization has been that small is beautiful. I have always been proud to be one of its members. But, throughout the years, my RD students have become members of ADA. ADA members do not attend this meeting. This is one of the issues: since we are enlarging our society, I would like to see us include more nutrition-related organizations so we can contribute together.

Ronnenn Roubenoff: I think that the historical changes that have happened over the last 50 years in both the clinical society and in the ASNS are what are being recognized now. This reorganization has both an internal and an external purpose. The internal purpose, I think, is to recognize that the ASCN, which started out as 100% physicians, is now about 30% physicians, and that most of the ASCN members do work that is essentially indistinguishable from the non- ASCN membership of ASNS. So I think that in part what we are seeing is a structure that is historically rooted but not necessarily particularly functional, and that the concerns about what the councils will do, which are natural, are really suggesting that there is some sort of external takeover. There isn't really. I am not particularly worried about how it will go. We have some safeguards in there about how the money flows, so the councils do have proportional representation financially as well as on the Executive Board. On the extrinsic side, the reason that we have gone this far down this road is because of the recognition of what the obesity epidemic has done to nutrition; what the AIDS epidemic did to infectious disease. It has taken what was a very small and sleepy area and put it front and center in the middle of a hurricane. I expect that if we want to have a voice in how scientific progress will be made, we need to have that ability to grow and become one voice. The science in the future of biology is going to be much more like physics-big science with big projects-and it is not necessarily going to be little one-man shows as it has been in the past. I think that is why we need to be able to not have the voice of nutrition lost in the disease-specific societies that will otherwise take over this policy area.

Charles Halsted: I have a concern that one of the principles or goals of the ASCN is not stated clearly in this vision; that is the education of future doctors in nutrition principles and in the education of practicing physicians.

Kathleen Rasmussen: This is in the purpose mission statement that is in the bylaws.

Charles Halsted: I still have concerns because with the council structure, though there will be a council on medical nutrition, it is not clear what priorities will be given and what resources will be allocated for this particular ASCN goal, which will then be incorporated into the society. It is all very well and good to say we will have this in the structure, but it doesn't really say how you argue for the funds to carry it out, like the physician nutrition scientist program. Is this something that will have to be negotiated each year, or is this built into the society the same way as it is into the ASCN?

Sam Klein: What we have learned the last couple of days here, plus the purpose of having the bylaws put on the website, is to get feedback from members as to what is important. I think that this issue that we have become very appreciative of-the importance of medical nutrition-has really stood up above many of the rest, and I think that we should understand that what is now on the website and what you see is not the final version. We will take these into consideration to make those changes and safeguard medical nutrition for the future potential society.

Robert Cousins: I think it is time that we do more forward. I think we need to establish a 1-person, 1-vote policy. It is very good to have multiple interests, but I don't think you should be able, because of those multiple interests, to have 2 or 3 votes on an issue or on an elected position.

Kathleen Rasmussen: It is structured as you have described it.

Secretary's report-Sharon Donovan

This is just a brief summary of the actions of the Council in the past year. Most of our activities were tied up with the Guiding Coalition and establishing the Joint Council Advisory Group. We also, as a society, adopted a position in opposition to the NIH policy on public access, like many other scientific societies, however unsuccessfully. We carried out a travel grant program to support the International Congress of Nutrition; both Councils allocated funds and monies from an NIH grant. We established a minority affairs committee, which is chaired by Kristie Lancaster, and supported travel awards for students to this EB meeting. We formed an agreement with Ajinimoto to es\tablish an award in honor of our esteemed colleague, Vernon Young, in the area of protein and amino acid metabolism. The award will be given for the first time in 2006. So look for that notice in the Call for Nominations in The Journal of Nutrition. Also, when Dale Bauman was president, he negotiated for a teaching award in nutrition. This will also be given for the first time at the award ceremony in 2006. Also this year at EB, with our colleagues in ASCN, we jointly sponsored a media reporting and interpretation award, which was supported by the joint PIC committee and was given last evening to Sally Squires.

In our membership figures we are continuing to see a very good and strong increase in our student and associate numbers. We need to consider how our society is going to retain and continue to get these young people to carry our future forward. They really are our future. Our membership is relatively stable, although we actually went down a bit this year. Overall, our membership numbers have been fairly constant for the last several years.

I will now read the names of the members who have passed away during the last year and I would ask, at the end, for a moment of silence.

Lynn D. Abbott, Richmond, VA

Aaron Arnold, Alameda, CA

George K. Davis, Gainesville, FL (Fellow)

Peter Furst, Bonn, Germany (Fellow)

Annette T. Gormican, Roseville, MN

William J. McGanity, Galveston, TX

Helen G. Oldham, State College, PA (Fellow)

David Sklan, Rehovot, Israel

Clive E. West, Wageningen, The Netherlands

Jong-Tseng Yen, clay Center, NE

I'd like to introduce the brave individuals who agreed to run for office. We had 779 ballots counted, which is typical of our elections. Elected for ASNS Council: President-Elect, Joanne Lupton; Councilor, Jack Odle; Secretary, Susan K. Fried. Our nominating committee, which will be chaired by Linda Meyers, includes Douglas G. Burrin, William H. Dietz, Linda J. Wykes, and Susan M. Hutson. It should be noted that, if the Council does reorganize, these officers will not take office. We will likely go into a transitional structure with elections to be held at a later date.

Because of an existing protocol, which resolves that the American Society for Nutritional Sciences wishes to recognize the contribution of these members to the nutrition community and orders that biographical statements on the Fellows of the Society be placed in the Proceedings as a permanent record, this follows:

George K. Davis was born in Pittsburgh, PA on July 2, 1910. He received his B.S. from Penn State University in 1932; his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1937. He served from 1933 to 1937 as an assistant in nutrition at Cornell; as Assistant Professor at Michigan State University from 1937 to 1942; and after that his career continued at the University of Florida at Gainesville for 38 years. He became emeritus in 1979. During his active research career, Dr. Davis authored or coauthored over 250 scientific publications and 300 popular articles. His early work pioneered the use of radioactive isotopes in nutrition research. He made major contributions to knowledge of the role of chelation in trace element nutritional availability and the metabolism of micronutrients. While at Florida Dr. Davis was successively Director of Nuclear Sciences, Director of Biological Sciences, and Director of Sponsored Research. He supervised the nutrition component of USDA's Competitive Research Grants Program. Dr. Davis received many awards, including the AIN Borden Award in 1964. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), served as Chairman of the Board of Agriculture and Renewable Resources for NAS-NRC, and was active in international scientific affairs as Chair of the U.S. Committee for the International Union of Nutrition Sciences, as well as the President of the XII International Congress of Nutrition.

Peter Furst was born in Budapest on April 17, 1936. He studied music for 7 years in his native city, before registering in the Medicine School of Budapest. Nevertheless, the events that happened in 1956 in his country prevented him from graduating. Along with other Hungarians who had supported the overthrown government of Imre Nagy, he was forced to emigrate, first to Austria and later to Sweden. In Sweden, he studied medicine at the Karolinska Institute and completed his doctorate in biochemistry at the University of Stockholm. He held several positions, one of special note-Director of the Metabolic Research Laboratory of the Hospital Saint Erik, Stockholm (from 1972 to 1981). In the 1980s, Dr. Furst settled in the city of Stuttgart, where he served as university professor and head of the Department of the Institute of Biological Chemistry and Nutrition at the University of Hohenheim. Dr. Furst worked in multiple fields related to nutrition, particularly in the metabolism of amino acids and peptides. He published over 501 articles.

Dr. Furst also worked in underdeveloped countries-Guatemala, Maldives, and Ethiopia-where he established nutritional programs for the community. He was dedicated to the mentoring of new nutritionists. He is credited with the establishment of the European Society of Parenteral and Enterai Nutrition (ESPEN). After its foundation, Dr. Furst filled different positions and assumed responsibilities for the sake of ESPEN's growth.

Dr. Furst served on the boards of several journals, The Journal of Parenteral and Enterai Nutrition, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and The Journal of Nutrition. His death in December 2004 left a great void in the international scientific community.

Helen G. Oldham was born in Iowa and received her B.S. degree from Iowa State University in 1925. She earned her M.S. degree and then her Ph.D. (1939) at the University of Chicago. As a research associate in the Department of Pediatrics at Chicago, her work on the iron requirement of infants, published in 1937, was definitive. It became the basis for the U.S. government's Recommended Dietary Allowances in 1945 and continued to be cited through 6 revisions. Dr. Oldham became Assistant Professor in the University of Chicago's Department of Home Economics in 1940 and Associate Professor in 1948. Her work on riboflavin and thiamin requirements has become classic, and these studies have been used in the formulation of the RDA for decades. Perhaps the most prescient of Dr. Oldham's research studies were those on the effect of energy intake on nitrogen utilization during pregnancy. The results were published in 1951. Dr. Oldham pointed out the lower limit of energy intake required for adequate utilization of protein during pregnancy; by the 1980s the full impact of this work became apparent.

Dr. Oldham taught and directed the research activities of many graduate students in the Department of Home Economics at the University of Chicago. When the department was disbanded in 1952, she joined the Human Nutrition Research Branch of the USDA in Beltsville, MD. She was responsible for contracted research until her retirement in 1967. She worked closely with nutritionists all over the country in the design of studies, the laboratory methods employed, and the interpretation and presentation of data. Policy at that time did not permit the names of USDA nutritionists to appear on publications and, as a result, many other significant contributions are identified with Dr. Oldham only in the memories of those with whom she collaborated, particularly on problems of amino acid and lipid utilization.

Dr. Oldham was a member of a special mission to Germany following World War II and was an honorary member of the Friends of the University of Heidelberg. She joined AIN in 1946; was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of Sigma Xi and Iota Sigma Pi.

Treasurer's report-Penny Kris-Etherton

You have a copy of the ASNS budget (Table 1) and I would like to direct your attention to the 2 columns in the middle: Budget 2004 and Actual 2004. But before I begin, I have a couple of very general comments. First, in terms of our audited budget for 2003, everything is in place, neat and tidy. Our 2004 budget is currently being audited. Second, because we have such a good strong budget, there is no reason to have a dues increase. We have not recommended a dues increase for about 10 years. Overall, the revenue flow is really good and we have revenue over expenses. We are about $130,000 ahead. When you look at sources of revenue, just note that our major sources are from membership and, as you heard from Sharon, our numbers are holding strong though there are shifts in the membership categories. We are doing very well in terms of revenue from the annual meeting, and, in fact, that is why we are about $100,000 ahead in terms of our actual budget for 2004 compared to what was budgeted. And so we received an additional $100,000 from our 75th gala celebration last year. I would like to note a very significant resource-the EB meeting. In addition, our journal is really keeping us very strong. One other thing to point out is that we are doing very well on our investments. You can see the figures for realized gains on investments and unrealized gains on investments in the budget statement. We do not have those numbers for 2004 because we do not see them until the budget is audited. Over a 5-year period from December 31, 1999 until December 31, 2004 our assets are up 32.7%-much better than the stock index. In fact the NASDAQ index during that period of time is down 45.5%. We are doing extremely well. All in all, we have about $2.8 million in investments.

FASEB report-Bruce Bistrian

ASNS is one of the 22 members of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), which advocates and conducts activities on a number of public affairs issues, some of which I will go through briefly today. I have been your representative to the FASEB Board and to the FASEB Public Affa\irs Executive Committee for several years. We make recommendations to the major funding agencies, recommending $200 million for the National Research Initiative for the Competitive Grants Program; the creation of a national institute of food and agriculture with a budget of $240 million; a 6% increase for NIH, which of course was not realized. The President's 2006 budget provides an increased amount of money for the Nutrition Research Initiative as well as increasing the indirect costs from the present 25% to be now competitive with what NIH provides. However, there is a planned phase-out of Hatch-McIntyre-Stennis fund programs in animal health and disease-the land-grant colleges. I've heard today that this is at least on hold for the next year but is something that needs to be addressed by your society as well as FASEB in the future.

TABLE 1

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR NUTRITIONAL SCIENCES

Statements of Unrestricted Net Assets

Audited 2003, Budget 2004, Actual 2004, and Budget 2005

One of the things we've addressed this year is the NIH policy on public access. You've heard about this: in the future, when research is funded by the NIH, authors are being requested to voluntarily submit their final approved manuscript to PubMed Central, for release to the public. This has some implications for the journals and the JN and AJCN are both going to comply with the regulation. There are some conflict-of-interest rules, which were just released, and we had serious concerns about making NIH scientists, in-house scientists, being competitive. Hopefully these conflict-of-interest rules will be amended over time. FASEB has undergone the rigors of a strategic plan; we are in the final stages of approval and just beginning implementation. The changes you see were to increase transparency and the participation of the full Board, and we have done things to improve our financial status. We will have a dues increase, which will have some impact; it will be minimized so that it can never increase more than 30% in one year. The other issues that we have addressed this year are stem cells, training and career opportunities, animal rights issues, visa clearances, and a new editor for the FASEB Journal.

Public Policy Committee report-Patsy Brannon

I want to begin with a major activity that the Public Policy Committee has undertaken this year, which is to develop a policy action plan. The feature of this plan, which is in process now, is to become strategic and proactive. There is a strong sense that we've been very reactive in our policy efforts. We need to be proactive. We're identifying goals and objectives and actions that will allow us to plan our activities as well as an annual process for establishing priorities-particularly allowing us to be flexible to hot-button issues but also to have ongoing multiyear efforts related to policy. We have done this with participation from the ASCN Public Affairs Committee and with SINR. We are working together with them and finalizing a plan to submit this to Council in June.

In addition to this, we have a number of ongoing legislative advocacy activities. Chief among these relate to the NIH and USDA budgets. We've done this in conjunction with FASEB and CoFARM. We've also worked on nutrition monitoring in conjunction with the coalition and I'd like to note that ASNS was the lead organization in securing Congressman Hinchey's support for the nutrition monitoring, which was a major and important effort. We've been active on agency policy issues, chief among them at NIH related to conflict of interest and open access, and we worked on open access with our publications committee. We've also submitted a nomination for the NICHD Advisory Council. Related to FDA, we've commented on the bioactive food components definition jointly with ASCN, and we joined a new coalition on food research, an advocacy coalition, and we are working out the details and priorities of that effort.

The Journal of Nutrition Editor's report-Catharine Ross

I would like to begin by thanking the Council and the Society for the honor of serving as the 10th editor of The Journal of Nutrition, which was founded in 1928. We are now in the 76th year of publication. I stepped into the large shoes of John Suttie, made comfortable by the fact that The Journal was already in very good shape. Our philosophy for The Journal is "Accepting the best." In 2004 The Journal received 1271 manuscripts for review, 15% over that in 2003-representing a continuous increase over the last several years. Over 2000 reviews were conducted; 413 manuscripts were accepted and, by and large, these are research articles. They represent publications emanating from 34 countries. The editorial objectives are to maintain The Journal's reputation for fair, high- quality, and constructive reviews; to increase The Journal's stature; and to continue to represent the broad interests of the society membership. We publish high-quality research, ranging from articles on humans, animal models, molecular biology, immunology, molecular genetics-as illustrated by The Journal of Nutrition cover illustrations. We've published one or two RANS articles in each issue. These are the Recent Advances in Nutritional Sciences that provide excellent scientific updates, and here I would like to thank John Suttie for continuing to edit them.

I would like to encourage those of you who teach to take The Journal of Nutrition into your classroom and show it to your students because it contains a great deal of relevant and exciting science. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the editors completing their terms, Joanne Lupton and Joe Prohaska. I also want to thank the continuing editors and mention that we have a new person joining in 2005 as an Associate Editor, Jesse Gregory. Thanks also to the members of the Editorial Board and the many ad hoc reviewers who helped The Journal in the last year. I know that many of you are in our audience tonight.

Some selling points for The Journal, because I consider you our salesmen: our turnaround times are favorable; The Journal's citation index has been increasing; JN reaches the nutritional scientists around the world, and it speaks for nutritional scientists around the world. We want your best papers.

We maintain high-quality editing and production oversight; we publish interesting, high-quality symposia; and that is really the responsibility of Kathy Harden, our Assistant Editor, and Karen King, Director of Communications. They have been invaluable to me in the last year in getting started; additional staff have also been very helpful. We also publish supplements, edited by guest editors. Again, they provide detailed and specialized material that is important to nutritional sciences. Finally, trends in 2005: submissions are up 21% over the first 3 months of this year as compared to the first 3 months of last year. The pages budgeted, however, have not increased and so competition for page space is up. That means that we as editors need to carefully select priority manuscripts. The priority has, in fact, become a bigger issue than it was at one point. We also have to manage effectively. And so, if you, as an author, receive a request to shorten your article, please understand that this is in part pressure that we need to exert. And we are using technology effectively to increase the use of supplementary material that is online only-so that the printed pages can be preserved for the really necessary materials.

In conclusion, we are accepting the best and we would really like to position The Journal of Nutrition as a premier nutritional sciences journal, one of the many science journals published in the United States which represents internationally important work.

Executive Officer's report-Richard Allison

I want to thank everyone for continuing to keep our abstract submissions for this annual meeting up . . . we seem to creep up a little every year. Great participation! A couple of reminders of the Presidential Lectures still to be presented: at noon tomorrow, Dale Schoeller will be presenting the Atwater Lecture in the Convention Center in Room 6D, and then tomorrow evening David Mangelsdorf will present the final Presidential Lecture, also in the Convention Center, Room 6D. A reception will follow both of these lectures. I remind you that there was a mistake in the publication of the SINR meeting, which begins immediately following this meeting. Kathy reminded you at the beginning of the evening; I'll remind you again. The meeting is in Marina D of this hotel. I hope to see you next year in San Francisco.

Kathleen Rasmussen: Thanks to the Council members who will be rotating off. Thanks to Dale Bauman, our past president; Sharon Donovan, Secretary; our Treasurer, Penny Kris-Etherton; and our Senior Councilor, Joanne Lupton. (applause)

Incoming President's Address-Dennis Bier

I have had the opportunity to serve with many society presidents in the course of my academic career. I have had the opportunity to work with Kathleen Rasmussen for a year, and she is absolutely among the best. I think the Society owes her a tremendous debt of gratitude for all the work she has done in the last year. She has also reminded us that some Council members are going to rotate off, and, given the status of the current initiatives of the new society, I am not sure who is going to rotate off!

Some of us are old enough and many of the people in the audience have been lucky enough to have actually seen and heard Pete Seeger when he performed. He was one of the authors of a song that the Weavers used to sing, "Wasn't That a Time!" Well, in his case, it was really a terrible time. But I think what we have been hearing in the last several days is not a terrible time, but we are thinking about another time. I've learned that you can't have any credibility anymore unless you take a perfectly good English word and add "- omics " to it. So \I am calling this pastomics. This was the time . . . there were only 4 basic food groups. The NIH had real money. You could get a grant funded with a priority of 300. Academics all met together in Atlantic City. And the elite members were members of the ASCI and the AAP, and people really died to get into those societies, whose meeting totals in the current year are less than the people in this room. There was an Institute of Nutrition, not of Nutritional Sciences. The reason I bring that up is because we have heard from many people who would be disturbed that the word sciences leaves our name. But remember that "sciences" was not in the name of the American institute of Nutrition, and no one had any problem telling what it did. Its members were primarily Ph.D.s. Most of the medical subspecialty societies were either nonexistent or very small, and the ASCN members were almost all M.D.s, and people trusted their doctor.

The majority of time in science should really be spent looking ahead and not behind. The quote below, which I actually heard in the hallway of an EB meeting about 2 years ago, refers to the nutritionists: "I've never seen a discipline that spends so much of its time on the past." We shouldn't be spending our time on our past. So what about what I would call ASomics, either ASNS- or ASCNomics? Where have all the physicians gone? Well, they have gone to these subspecialty societies, who now have nutrition councils and nutrition subunits that are far bigger than some of our societies.

I remember very well, at the American Diabetes Association meeting, sitting at a dinner when the American Diabetes Association announced to the approximately 300 elite physicians of that association that they were going to open the membership to nonphysician academics, i.e., diabetes educators, nurse practitioners, and the like. I thought it was the dumbest thing I had ever heard. Well, 30 years have proven me absolutely wrong. Not only has this society grown by leaps and bounds, the level of science has grown, the level of participation has grown, the level of commercial activities has grown. All of these organizations have grown because they have recognized the contributions of all the people who can participate in those subspecialty societies.

In the case of this society, we are all interdisciplinary scientists. We heard about the obesity epidemic. We are not going to solve that without the participation of people like social scientists, behavioral scientists, and others who can contribute their expertise to these areas and make these societies stronger. So, what about futureomics? At the Council meeting the other day, the Long Range Planning Committee gave us a list of 9 big-picture concepts. Seven out of the 9 are all strengthened by our societies becoming one and speaking with one voice and expanding the membership to the kind of areas that I talked about. This was an assessment by the Long Range Planning Committee that was independent of the Guiding Coalition assessment. I think that they came to a group of activities that are going to require our societies to consolidate and expand the membership in the way we have talked about.

So finally I have come to synergomics, and the brand identity of ASNS and ASCN and SINR is general nutrition, academics, and scholarship. ASCN is not a brand identity described as "primarily medical practice." It's academic medical nutrition. The thing that ties us together is the fact we are general nutrition societies. We don't have a vested interest in one aspect of nutrition. We are all academically inclined and we engage in scholarly activities. In my opinion, these interests are best served by a single society speaking with one voice.

If anyone remembers the last verse of Pete Seeger's song, isn't this a time. I think this is the time for us to do this because society, research, nutrition have changed; medical practice has changed and this is the time for us to do what we have proposed to do.

Kathleen Rasmussen: This meeting is adjourned.

AWARD WINNERS-2005

The Bio Serv Award in Experimental Animal Nutrition is given for meritorious research in nutrition by an investigator who received the doctoral degree in the 10 years preceding the month the award is presented. The work recognized must involve the nutrition of experimental animals used as models. The award of $1000 and an inscribed plaque is made available by Bio-Serv, Inc. In 2005 the award is presented to Josep Bassaganya-Riera, Assistant Professor, Department of Human Nutrition, Foods and Exercise, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Dr. Bassaganya-Riera uses the pig as an animal model to study effects of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) on amelioration of morbidity caused by viral and bacterial infections. His work has suggested mechanisms of action for the anti-inflammatory effects of CLA. He has also shown that prevaccination consumption of CLA enhances the responsiveness to micro bial vaccines and also induces functional modifications in porcine CD8 T-cell populations. Dr. Bassaganya-Riera's work in immunology and nutrition will no doubt lead to new approaches for minimizing the morbidity associated with bacterial and viral disease entities.

The Centrum Center for Nutrition Science Award made available by Wyeth Consumer Healthcare, is given in recognition of recent investigative contributions of significance to the basic understanding of human nutrition. It consists of an award of $1500 and an inscribed plaque. The 2005 award is made to James O. Hill, Director, Clinical Nutrition Research Unit, University of Colorado Health Science Center.

Dr. Hill is a well-recognized expert in weight management and behavior. He is the cofounder of the National Weight Control Registry, at the University of Colorado, where he tracks over 3000 people who have lost weight and kept the weight off permanently. In addition to his significant research contributions on obesity and the numerous clinical trials he has designed, coordinated, and published, he has spent the last several years translating the science of weight management into simple programs that work in the community. One of his most recent successes in this regard is a lifestyle program called Colorado on the Move, which has recently become adopted as a national program for lifestyle modification to increase physical activity in order to prevent weight gain-America on the Move. Dr. Hill's work is particularly relevant as the "obesity epidemic" is broadly being discussed and debated both in the United States and abroad. His research has in part laid the groundwork for a more complete understanding of the scientific foundation of the problem of obesity and how to combat it.

The Conrad A. Elvehjem Award for Public Service in Nutrition is given in recognition of specific and distinguished service to the public through the science of nutrition. The award of $1500 and an engraved plaque is made available by Kraft Foods. In 2005 the award is made to Johanna T. Dwyer, Senior Research Scientist, OD/ODS/NIH.

Johanna T. Dwyer has had an illustrious career in nutrition and public service that spans 30 years. As a scientist and registered dietitian, she has made numerous contributions to nutritional research for which she has been recognized by her peers who awarded her the prestigious USDA W. O. Atwater award for her work on nutritionally related issues of children, vegetarians, and the elderly. She has been a pioneer in communicating nutrition to the public; has authored nationwide newspaper columns, as well as over 150 reviews that communicate nutrition to a diverse audience of health professionals. She is the current editor of Tufts University "Nutrition Today" Newsletter, and serves as a nutrition consultant to many popular consumer publications.

Dr. Dwyer has a distinctive record of professional public service. She participated in the early White House conference on nutrition; was a staff assistant in both the House and Senate, where she participated in setting national nutrition policy. More recently she has served as the Assistant Administrator for Human Nutrition for the USDA and is currently working in the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, where she is helping to set research policy in this evolving area. She is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, Food Nutrition Board (NAS); has participated in the deliberations of the FDA Center for Science and Applied Nutrition, the Office of the Surgeon General, and the Office of Technology Assessment; has occupied high offices in all the major nutritional professional societies, including ASNS, ASCN, SNE, and ADA. In all of these endeavors, Dr. Dwyer has worked diligently and untiringly in the cause of nutrition-always creating and disseminating accurate, meaningful scientific information to the public.

The Mead Johnson Award for Research in Nutrition is given to an investigator for a single outstanding piece of nutrition research or a series of papers on the same subject accomplished within 10 years of completing postgraduate training. The award for $2500 and an inscribed plaque is made available by Mead Johnson Nutritionals. This year's recipient is Xingen Lei, Associate Professor, Department of Animal Science, Cornell University.

Dr. Lei has been awarded the Mead Johnson Award for 2005 based upon his pioneering research on selenium-dependent glutathione peroxidase-1 (GPX1), the most abundant biochemical form of body selenium. Dr. Lei has applied the newly developed GPX1 overexpression and knockout mouse models to demonstrate unequivocally that GPX1 is not only protective against acute oxidative stress, but also is a mediator of body selenium for the oxidative protection in mice. His research provides the first direct evidence that GPX1 functions as an antioxidant enzyme in vivo. It has also shown that the protection of GPX1 depends on the level of stress imposed on the anim\al and the body selenium status. Perhaps the most exciting discovery by Dr. Lei's research team is the development of insulin resistance and obesity in mice overexpressing GPX1. The insulin resistance is associated with significant reductions in the insulin-stimulated phosphorylation of insulin receptor in the liver and Akt in liver and muscle. This is the first report on the development of insulin resistance in mammals with elevated expression of an antioxidant enzyme.

The Osborne and Mendel Award, which is made available by ILSI North America, is given in recognition of outstanding recent basic research in nutrition. The 2005 award, consisting of $2500 and an engraved plaque, is made to Donald B. Jump, Professor of Physiology, Biochemistry, and Molecular Biology, Michigan State University.

Dr. Jump has, in the past decade, significantly advanced our understanding of the important role for dietary PUFAs in gene regulation. Fatty acids' effects on gene expression are cell- specific and influenced by fatty acid structure and metabolism. Fatty acids interact with the genome through several mechanisms. They regulate the activity or nuclear abundance of several transcription factors. He has identified specific transcription factors including PPAR-α and SREBP-1c involved in PUFA regulation on specific genes, and has ruled out other factors. More recently, he has turned his attention to cell specific metabolism of PUFAs, including regulation of chain elongation and retroconversion of PUFAs, to understand what controls the cell concentrations of the most bioactive PUFA species. He has published 14 substantial original research contributions to this area of research in the past decade. Dr. Jump has also contributed 19 invited reviews/chapters to the field. His work on fatty acid-regulated pathways has provided insight into the role dietary fat plays in human health and the onset and progression of major chronic disease, like coronary heart disease, inflammation, diabetes, cancer, and depressive disorders.

The Dannon Institute Mentorship Award, made available by Dannon Institute, is given for outstanding mentorship in the development of successful nutritional research science investigators. The award consists of $2500 and an engraved plaque. This year's awardee is Donald C Beitz, Distinguished Professor, Department of Animal Science; Biochemistry and Biophysics, and Molecular Biology, Iowa State University.

During nearly 4 decades in nutrition science research and education at Iowa State University, Dr. Beitz has chaired or cochaired the thesis committees for 33 Ph.D. and 42 M.S. students and worked with 7 postdoctoral associates. He has mentored countless other graduate students as an advisory committee member, course instructor, or just an acquaintance. More than 100 undergraduate students have worked in his laboratory on a variety of projects, many appearing later as graduate students. Dr. Beitz encourages students to be active in professional organizations, nudges them to attend on-campus seminars and symposia regularly, and insists they attend national society meetings, especially to present their research in a national forum while still students. He has included students and post docs, often as first authors, on his more than 160 published refereed journal articles and 260 abstracts. He looks for opportunities for his students to talk about their research, e.g., having them meet informally with visiting scientists; hosting receptions of alumni at annual Experimental Biology and Animal Science meetings; and introducing people at meetings whom he thinks need to know each other. Dr. Beitz's students have gone on to successful nutrition science careers in academia, government and industry.

The Peter Reeds Memorial Young Investigator Award, established in 2002 with an initial contribution from the Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine, is awarded in 2005 to Bart Deplancke, Postdoctoral Fellow, Program of Gene Function and Expression, Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester.

The Peter Reeds Memorial Young Investigator Award is given for outstanding research in macronutrient metabolism accomplished within 5 years of receiving a Ph.D. or completing residency training. The $1500 award includes an engraved plaque.

Dr. Deplancke received his master's degree in bioengineering from Ghent University, Belgium, and his doctoral degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under the mentorship of Rex Gaskins. His doctoral work focused on how host genetic background affects disease outcome in response to bacterial-derived environmental insults. After his graduation in 2002, Dr. Deplancke was nominated as a King Baudoin-Belgian American Educational Foundation Fellow, which allowed him to start a postdoctoral fellowship in the functional genomics field (in the laboratory of Marc Vidai at Harvard Medical School) under direct supervision of Marian Walhout. Dr. Deplancke joined Dr. Walhout in 2003 at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he is deciphering the transcription regulatory networks underlying intestinal development and homeostasis.

The E.L.R. Stokstad Award is given for outstanding fundamental research in nutrition, with preference to scientists at relatively early stages in their careers. The award of $2500 and an engraved plaque is supported by an endowment from the family of E.L.R. Stokstad. In 2005, the award is made to Xiang-Dong Wang, Associate Professor and Director, Nutrition and Cancer Biology Laboratory, HNRCA at Tufts University.

Dr. Wang is cited for his innovative research on the role of carotenoids in cigaret

Source: Journal of Nutrition, The

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