Alice Huang appointed to board of new graduate school

PASADENA—Dr. Alice S. Huang, senior councilor for external relations and faculty associate in biology at the California Institute of Technology, has been named to the board of trustees of the newly formed Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences.

Her appointment was announced June 22 by Henry E. Riggs, president of the institute, which is the newest component of the Claremont Consortium of Colleges.

"Alice is one of the outstanding biologists in the country, and a superb science administrator," Riggs said. "Her experience as dean for science at New York University will be of great benefit as we pursue our goal of educating a new type of science professional—one who also understands how business and high-tech industry work."

Huang moved to Southern California last year when her husband, David Baltimore, was appointed president of Caltech. She was dean at NYU from 1991 to 1997, and before that, was a faculty member at Harvard University for 20 years.

Born in China, Huang was educated in the United States and received her BA, MA, and PhD degrees from the Johns Hopkins University. As a graduate student, she was the first to purify and characterize defective interfering viral particles. Her postulate that these mutants play a major role in viral pathogenesis stimulated work on many viral systems and currently provides an important avenue for controlling diseases, especially of plants.

In 1979, while at Harvard, she became director of the Laboratories of Infectious Diseases at Children's Hospital in Boston. There, she established a unit working on viral diseases of pediatric patients, and also initiated an AIDS unit.

Huang and Michael T. Smith (chairman and CEO of Hughes Electronics Corporation) become the eighth and ninth members of the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences Board of Trustees. Over the next five years, the board is expected to grow to 30 members.

Founded in March 1997, the institute is dedicated to the training of life sciences professionals who can synthesize knowledge of biology, chemistry, engineering, and business to transform the vast potential of the life sciences into applied technologies. The institute will offer innovative, focused, and interdisciplinary graduate-level programs to prepare highly qualified students for responsible, professional careers in organizations based on the life sciences. The institute will begin offering classes in the fall of 1999.