Harald Sontheimer, who joined Virginia Tech earlier this month to direct a university-wide neuroscience initiative, will hold the I. D. Wilson Chair in the College of Science. That appointment was recently approved by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The I. D. Wilson Chair in the College of Science was established in 2014 by alumnus Luther Hamlett. The chair is named for I. D. Wilson, a long-time faculty member and administrator in the Department of Biology. Hamlett is a strong supporter of the Academy of Integrated Science, one of most significant initiatives in the College of Science.

In addition to his appointment as a professor in the College of Science, Sontheimer has joined the faculty at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. There he oversees his own research laboratory and directs the institute’s new Glial Biology in Health, Disease, and Cancer Center. He will also oversee the research of other faculty members who will be recruited to the center.

Sontheimer was most recently a professor of neurobiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where for the past two decades he led several major programs, including the Civitan International Research Center on Intellectual Disabilities and the world’s first Center for Glial Biology in Medicine.

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