Holland Named NIAID Scientific Director

Dr. Steven M. Holland has been appointed director of the NIAID Division of Intramural Research, succeeding Dr. Kathy Zoon. Holland has served NIAID as chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseases since 2004 and as NIH deputy director for intramural clinical research since 2011. His research areas of special interest have included Job’s syndrome (autosomal dominant STAT3 deficiency) and the genetic conditions predisposing people to mycobacterial infections. 

More recently, Holland has been interested in genetic conditions associated with severe coccidioidomycosis and acquired forms of anticytokine autoimmunity predisposing to opportunistic infections. He is the author of more than 500 publications and has been named an NIH distinguished investigator. 

Holland has received the American College of Physicians Award for Science, the Boyle Scientific Achievement Award of the Immune Deficiency Foundation, the American Society for Microbiology Abbott Award, the Erwin Neter Award of the Association of Medical Laboratory Immunologists and the NIH Distinguished Clinical Teacher Award, among other honors. 

Holland received his B.A. from St. John’s College in Annapolis in 1979 and his M.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1983. He remained at Johns Hopkins for his internal medicine residency, chief residency and fellowship in infectious diseases. During that time he worked with Dr. Thomas Quinn on chlamydia diagnosis and pathogenesis. Holland came to NIAID in 1989 as a National Research Council fellow in Dr. Sundararajan Venkatesan’s section in the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, working on rev-mediated transcriptional regulation of HIV.  

Shifting his research to the host side, with a focus on phagocyte defects and their associated infections, Holland joined Dr. John Gallin’s section in the Laboratory of Host Defenses (LHD) in 1991. Holland’s work in LHD centered on the pathogenesis and management of chronic granulomatous disease, as well as other congenital immune defects affecting phagocytes. He was tenured in 2000 and became chief of the immunopathogenesis section, which now resides within LCID. 

“Dr. Holland is a highly skilled and dedicated physician-scientist and administrator, and I am very pleased that he has agreed to take on this vitally important role within the institute,” said NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci, announcing the appointment. “I would also like to express my appreciation to NIAID principal deputy director Dr. Hugh Auchincloss, who has served so capably as acting director of DIR since Dr. Zoon stepped down last year.”   

Dr. Robert Munford will serve as acting chief of the LCID, pending recruitment of a permanent successor to Holland, who will continue to serve as chief of the immunopathogenesis section within the LCID.