Daniel Walz, Ph.D., associate dean for research and graduate programs, recently announced the appointment of Dr. Ambika Mathur, as the School of Medicine's director for programmatic grants.

Dr. Mathur will provide administrative leadership in initiatives involving training grants, program project grants and center grants for submission to federal funding agencies. She will also serve as the School of Medicine's liaison to the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Mathur received her Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology with Dr. Richard Lynch at the University of Iowa. After a post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota with Dr. Brian Van Ness, she was subsequently appointed assistant professor and then tenured associate professor of tumor immunology at the University of Minnesota , where she developed a strong interest in research training. She mentored post-doctoral fellows, doctoral students, master's students and undergraduate students, as well as medical fellows, medical residents, medical students and dental students.

Dr. Mathur was associated with developing and implementing a number of National Institutes of Health-funded training grants, including the NIH-funded Clinical Scientist Training Program, T32 training grants, summer research training grants and training grants to support minority high-school students.

She served on the University of Minnesota's Medical School admissions committee as well as on the Education Policy Committee of the School of Dentistry and was responsible for overseeing curriculum development. After serving as professor at West Virginia University, for the past two years Dr. Mathur has been on the faculty of The Carman & Ann Adams Department of Pediatrics at Wayne State University and the Children's Hospital of Michigan, where she is currently associate director of the Institute of Medical Education, Scientific Faculty Development. Since January 2005, she has also served as director of the newly created combined M.D./Ph.D. degree program.

Dr. Mathur and her husband, Dr. Deepak Kamat, professor and vice chair for education in the Department of Pediatrics, have 15-year-old twins. Dr. Mathur is also a published author of a series of books for children, and her passion is promoting literacy among children.