NIH Recognizes AAPI Month

For Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion joined with the Federal Asian Pacific American Council in highlighting the achievements of Dr. Vivek Murthy, the nation’s first Indian American surgeon general.

To further mark the occasion, EDI highlights the accomplishments of individuals in the AAPI community who have embodied Murthy’s spirit in their scientific work and contributions at NIH. They are:

• Dr. Zhiyong Lu, NIH’s first Earl Stadtman investigator in the area of computational biology and bioinformatics. Before becoming a Stadtman investigator in 2011, he served as a staff scientist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information since 2007. Today, Lu is deputy director for literature search at NCBI. Most recently, he played a key role in developing LitCovid, an open-resource literature hub that curates the most comprehensive collection of international research papers on the new coronavirus disease COVID-19.
• Dr. Noni Byrnes, director of the Center for Scientific Review. Born and educated in Pakistan, she came to the U.S. for college. Before working at NIH, she worked for Procter & Gamble’s pharmaceutical division, developing and evaluating analytical methods as part of drug development. In 2000, Byrnes began working at CSR as a scientific review officer and worked her way up to become director in February 2019.
• Dr. Maryland Pao is clinical director and deputy scientific director at the National Institute of Mental Health. A pediatrician and child and adolescent psychiatrist, she studies distress, suicide and correlates in medically ill children. Pao has published more than 120 research articles and chapters and helped develop Voicing My Choice, a new advance-care planning guide for adolescents and young adults.
• Dr. Leighton Chan is chief of the Clinical Center’s rehabilitation medicine department. He oversees an organization that collaborates with investigators from across NIH to provide innovative rehabilitation services. Chan has published more than 125 peer-reviewed articles, including 10 in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and The Lancet.