SMA Foundation Appoints Story Landis to its Board of Directors
The SMA Foundation has appointed Story Landis to its Board of Directors, effective February 24, 2015.
“We are deeply honored to have Dr. Landis join the Foundation’s board. Her commitment to research, therapeutics development and patients is extraordinary,” said Loren Eng, the Foundation’s President. “We look forward to having Dr. Landis’ input and guidance in the years ahead.”
Story Landis received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. After postdoctoral work at Harvard University, she served on the faculty of the Department of Neurobiology there. In 1985, she joined the faculty of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, where she created the Department of Neurosciences that, under her leadership, achieved an international reputation for excellence.
Dr. Landis joined the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in 1995 as Scientific Director and worked to re-engineer the lnstitute’s intramural research program, and fostered the growth of a trans-NIH neuroscience community that led to the construction of the Porter Neuroscience Building on the NIH campus. From 2003 to 2014, Dr. Landis served as the Director of NINDS, overseeing an annual budget of $1.6 billion that supported research by investigators in its intramural program and public and private institutions across the country. Together with NIMH and NIA directors, she co-chaired the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, a roadmap-like effort to support trans-NIH activities in the brain sciences. She and Dr. Tom Insel played a key role in launching the NIH BRAIN Initiative in 2013 and 2014.
Dr. Landis currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Vollum Institute at Oregon Health Sciences University and the Neurological Research Institute at Baylor College of Medicine and the Scientific Review Board of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Throughout her research career, Dr. Landis made fundamental contributions to the understanding of how functionally appropriate synapses form during development and the role of neurotrophins in the peripheral nervous system. She is an elected fellow of the Institute of Medicine, the Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2002, she was elected President of the Society for Neuroscience.