New UCSF Faculty, July 2009

Eric Goosby, the new US Global AIDS coordinator, says he will work to promote education and prevention, build international partnerships and encourage country-driven efforts to fight the AIDS epidemic.

Kimberly S. Topp has been named the chair of the Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science in the UCSF School of Medicine.

More than 400 new additions to UCSF’s clinical and research enterprise arrived on campus June 30 to start the next phase of their medical careers.

Scientists have identified a gene that is essential for embryonic stem cells to maintain their all-purpose, pluripotent state. Exploiting the finding may lead to a greater understanding of how cells acquire their specialized states and provide a strategy to efficientlyreprogram mature cells back into the pluripotent state, an elusive step in stem cell research but one crucial to a range of potential clinical treatments.

The California Poison Control System faces elimination due to state budget cuts.

UCSF continues to invest in information technology services, including improved email service thanks to the recent upgrade of the campus exchange email system.

UCSF recently graduated 108 managers who had been trained in a leadership development program that is now accepting nominations for the class of 2010.

A rapid rise in unemployment can be linked to an increase in suicides, homicides, and alcohol abuse, but job programs can successfully mitigate these rates, according to a new study reported in the “Lancet” medical journal.