The National Science Foundation (NSF) has a selected a new Assistant Director for the Directorate for Biological Sciences. Dr. John C. Wingfield will assume the post that has been held in an interim capacity by Dr. Joann Roskoski since October 2009. Wingfield joined NSF from the University of California at Davis in September 2010 as Division Director of Integrative Organismal Systems.
Wingfield is an environmental endocrinologist. His research centers on the neural endocrine mechanisms underlying organism-environment interactions. Of particular interest to Wingfield are the neural pathways for environmental signals affecting seasonality, mechanisms of coping with environmental stress, and the social modulation of hormone secretion. This research also interfaces with how animals deal with global climate change, endocrine disruption and conservation biology.
“It is indeed a great honor and a challenge to be appointed Assistant Director for BIO,†said Wingfield. “This is a transformational time for biological sciences in the post-genome era as we try to understand life on Earth from its most fundamental components at the molecular levels to functioning organisms interacting with their environments, and with each other, at ecosystem scales.â€
From 2003 to 2005, Wingfield served as President of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, and from 2006 to 2010 he was President of the XXV International Ornithological Congress.
Wingfield received his Ph.D. in Zoology and Comparative Endocrinology from the University College of North Wales, U.K. in 1973.