The US National Institutes of Health announced today that cell biologist Chris Kaiser will head up the $2 billion basic research arm of the federal funding agency. Kaiser, currently chair of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s biology department, expects to take over the reins of the US National Institute of General and Medical Sciences (NIGMS) from interim director Judith Greenberg in the spring of 2012.

“This job is probably one of the only jobs I would ever consider leaving MIT for. It is so important,” Kaiser told Nature Medicine. “I view it as one of the most important administrative positions in science.”

The NIGMS has funded Kaiser’s research at MIT for the last 20 years — ever since he set up shop as an independent investigator. His work on protein folding and membrane trafficking in yeast models is closely aligned with the NIGMS’s major objective: to understand basic biological processes at a molecular level.

As director of the NIGMS, Kaiser says his top priority is to work within current and future budget constraints to keep the traditional NIH funding streams alive and working for extramural researchers. He also plans to support training of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, and encourage people to join the scientific workforce. “That is something I take very seriously,” Kaiser says. “I want to make sure the training programs do their best at bringing the brightest young people into research careers.”

For more on the NIGMS, read our Q&A from earlier this year with former director Jeremy Berg, who left the agency in June.

Image Credit: NIGMS