Raynard Kington, the Principal Deputy Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will be leaving the biomedical agency after ten years. Kington has accepted a position as president of Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, beginning on 1 August. Francis Collins, the NIH director, announced Kington’s impending departure on Wednesday.
Kington, who joined the NIH in 2000 as director of its Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences, was made the agency’s deputy director by then-director Elias Zerhouni in 2003. He steered the NIH as acting director during the ten-month interval between Zerhouni’s departure in October, 2008 and Collins taking the helm in August, 2009.
It was not a quiet time: conflict of interest issues dogged the agency as Senator Charles Grassley investigated its extramural researchers, and Kington was obliged to initiate the drafting of new, tighter rules governing financial reporting by grantees. New guidelines for NIH funding of human embryonic stem cell research also had to be developed speedily under Kington’s guidance in the spring of 2009, after President Barack Obama liberalized Bush administration policy on funding the research. There was also the matter of quickly and intelligently doling out a $10.4 billion bonanza in economic stimulus funds, which came with the proviso that they be spent by the end of the 2010 fiscal year. Effectively, this meant that most major decisions about how the money would be spent were made during Kington’s tenure as acting director.
Kington, Collins said in his statement, “has often been an `unsung hero’ of the NIH. Many aren’t even aware of the innumerable battles he fought on behalf of our agency, on behalf of our staff and in defense of science.”
Speaking at Grinell College, Kington said: “It feels like I just announced my engagement to marry into to a really really big and passionate family….I’m so happy that my career has led to this place.” A video of his speech is embedded below.
You can read more about Kington in this piece by Science Insider.