The University of California, San Diego, has chosen molecular biologist Flossie Wong-Staal as the first recipient of its newly endowed Florence Seeley Riford Chair for AIDS Research. Wong-Staal will become the Florence Seeley Riford Chair Professor in the university's departments of biology and medicine.
After 16 years at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., Wong-Staal officially became the Riford chair professor at UC-San Diego on January 1. She plans to set up a collaborative program for developing vaccines against the AIDS virus, as well as to continue her research on the genes that regulate the reproduction and activity of the virus. She says one aspect of her research will involve a quest for "understanding how the AIDS virus works by focusing on regulation. There are many novel features of [the AIDS virus], including many different genes." Secondly, she says that she wants to "apply that technique and approach to ...
