Cross posted from Nature Medicine’s Spoonful of Medicine blog.
The architect and chairman of the California’s $3 billion stem cell agency is set to keep his job for a little longer. In a near-unanimous decision with one abstention, the agency’s board of directors resolved today to reelect Bob Klein — the man who co-wrote the ballot initiative that created the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and then served as the agency’s only chairman for the past six years — to another six months to help the organization identify a suitable successor.
“I’m going to be aggressively trying to find a replacement,” Klein told Nature Medicine. “Going forward here, we’re going to have the time to go through a process to define the criteria” for the next chairman.
Klein had previously vowed to step down from the agency’s helm at the end of his term this week. In his place, state officials tasked with nominating his replacement originally tapped current vice-chairman Art Torres as well as Alan Bernstein, executive director of the New York-based Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, as possible successors. But after Bernstein, a Canadian national who formerly headed the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, was forced to pull out of the race at the beginning of the month because of a state law requiring the head of a public agency to hold US citizenship, and Torres, a former state Senator, last week withdrew his nomination, Klein effectively became a shoo-in for the post.