CTSA Board of Director's newly appointed Chairperson.
Jo-Ann Leong, Director of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, assumed her new position in October 2001.  She has just been appointed as the University of Hawaii representative to serve on the Board of Directors for the Center for Tropical and Subtropical Aquaculture.  Dr. Leong is returning home to Hawaii.  She grew up in Kapahulu near the old Love's Bakery plant and remembers many happy weekends on Kaneohe Bay and Barber's Point where she camped out with her family.  She graduated from Roosevelt High School and the former Rough Rider went to the University of Hawaii for two years before transferring to the University of California at Berkeley for her B.A. degree.  She completed her doctoral thesis work at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco where she worked with J. Michael Bishop and Warren Levinson on retroviruses and reverse transcriptase. 
Dr. Leong's postdoctoral training was completed in Biochemistry at the UCSF with Howard Goodman and Herbert Boyer and in Cancer Research with Jay Levy.  She then took a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology at Oregon State University.  When she started there, 6 million steelhead trout fry had just died from infection by the virus, Infectious Hematopoietic Necrosis virus.  No molecular studies had been conducted on the virus and she devoted much of her career to studying this virus, developing vaccines for salmon, and using molecular tools to understand the immune response in fish.  She and her team developed the first recombinant vaccine for fish and the first DNA vaccine for fish.  They are now in the process of testing the technology as a general transient expression system in fish.  Dr. Leong continues to serve on the Board of Directors for the Western Regional Aquaculture Center as part of her joint appointment with Oregon State University.

Chairman of  CTSA's Executive Committee is
Gary D. Pruder, Ph.D

Pruder joined the Board of Directors February 1, 1997, when he was appointed vice president for programs and consortiums of The Oceanic Institute. Pruder added that job to two others: he has been an OI project manager and coordinator of the U.S. Marine Shrimp Farming Consortium since 1984 and serves as an affiliate graduate faculty member of the University of Hawaii's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. 
Pruder has a diverse background well suited to the broad demands of the jobs he holds. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from General Motors Institute in Flint, Michigan. He went on to earn a master's degree in business administration from the University of Delaware, the same institution from which he earned a doctorate in applied science, marine studies. He is author or co-author of more than 40 publications.

represents the University of Guam on the CTSA Board of Directors. 
Barcinas, who joined the Board of Directors in 1994, is the associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Guam and the director of that institution's Cooperative Extension Service. He earned his bachelor's degree in agriculture business management from California State Polytechnic Institute. He went on to earn a master's degree in agricultural economics from Washington State University and a doctorate in agricultural education from Ohio State University at Columbus. His doctoral work emphasized extension education, research and statistics, administration in higher education and evaluation. He is author or co-author of more than 25 publications.