TIGR President Is Named To Biosecurity Science Advisory Board

TIGR President Claire M. Fraser has been appointed to the new National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which provides oversight and advice to the Department of Health and Human Services on federally conducted or supported dual-use biological research.

July 07, 2005

Rockville, MD — TIGR President and Director Claire M. Fraser, Ph.D., has been appointed to the new National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity.

The Board provides advice and recommends strategies for what the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) calls "efficient and effective oversight of federally conducted or supported dual-use biological research, taking into consideration both national security concerns and the needs of the research community."

The appointments of Fraser and 23 other members of the biosecurity board were announced on June 30 by HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt.

Fraser, who co-founded TIGR in 1992 and has been the Institute's president since 1998, led the TIGR project to sequence the genomes of Bacillus anthracis and several other microbes that are considered biothreat agents. She is an expert in the use of genomics as a tool in microbial forensics, and she has served on several panels that consider scientific issues related to biosecurity.

Fraser is a past recipient of several science awards, including the 2005 Promega Biotechnology Research Award from the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), the nation's largest life sciences society.

Last fall, Fraser was named as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for "her pioneering efforts in the field of genomics, particularly in the sequencing and analysis of microbial genomes." She was awarded the E. O. Lawrence Award from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2002.