Cutberto Garza, professor and former director of the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University, has been reapppointed director of the division. He succeeds Jere Haas, the Nancy Schlegel Meinig Professor of Nutritional Science, who has been director for the past five years.

An internationally recognized expert on infant and maternal nutrition, Garza served as director of the division from 1988 to 1998 and as Cornell vice provost with responsibility for academic liaison from 1998 to 2000. Garza also is the director of the United Nations University's Food and Nutrition Program. He holds an M.D. as well as a Ph.D.

As director, Garza will oversee the division's 70 academic staff, 70 graduate students and 415 undergraduates. The division also is home to a number of formal and informal outreach programs. For example, the division is responsible for the nutrition components of Cornell Cooperative Extension's programs in New York state. The division's Cornell Food and Nutrition Policy Program is an adviser to governments and international institutions, such as the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Prior to joining the Cornell faculty in 1988, Garza served as a professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and as associate director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Baylor Children's Nutrition Research Center. He has served on numerous advisory groups for the U.S. government, the National Academies, the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.N. World Food Programme and other local and international agencies. He chaired the 1999 U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and was appointed co-chair of the U.S.-European Union Biotechnology Forum by President Clinton and Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission. He was a member of the WHO Expert Consultative Group on the Optimal Duration of Exclusive Breastfeeding and served as chair of the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine from 1996 to 2002.

He currently chairs the WHO's Multicenter Growth Reference Study, a six-country effort designed to develop new international growth standards for infants and young children. Recently he was appointed to the Board on International Scientific Organizations of the National Academies.

Among his past duties at Cornell was oversight for the universitywide Genomics Initiative research program. He was the recipient of the 1996 Feinstein World Hunger Prize for Research and Education awarded by Brown University. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and was named to the inaugural class of national associates of the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his contributions.

Garza earned his B.S. in chemistry at Baylor University in 1969, his medical degree at Baylor College of Medicine in 1973 and a Ph.D. in nutrition and food science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976.