Alumni Feature
One on One With . . .
Editor’s Note: This is an occasional Reflec-
tions series, and this issue features Siena
Heights chemistry graduate Dr. Amir Tamiz
’92, who heads the Division of Translational
Research for the National Institute of Neurol-
ogical Disorders and Strokes (NINDS) in
Washington, D.C..
Could you describe your current role and
some of the duties and responsibilities you
have on a day-to-day basis?
“I work at the National Institute of Neuro-
logical Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which is
focused to seek fundamental knowledge about
the brain and nervous system and to use that
knowledge to reduce the burden of neurological
disease. The NINDS is one of 27 institutes at the
National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Within NINDS, I head the Division of Transla-
tional Research, which is tasked with accelerat-
ing the preclinical discovery and development of
new therapeutic interventions for neurological
disorders and stroke. We provide funding and
resources (approximately $100 million annually)
through grants, cooperative agreements and
contracts to academic and industry researchers
to advance basic research technologies, devices
and therapeutic programs to first in human clini-
cal trials and commercialization, with the hope
to get therapies for patients who need them.
DTR helps academic and industry researchers
create a bridge through which discoveries made
in the lab lead to new and improved medical
treatments and options for patient care. We
offer a variety of programs that support the
design, implementation, and management of
research activities critical to translational chal-
lenges in the treatment of neurological disease
and stroke.
My day-to-day responsibilities vary—on
some days I’m participating in conferences
about advances in neuroscience or taking part
in a committee to identify the most promising
grant applications for funding. On other days,
I’m working with the team at NINDS to develop
training programs to help researchers learn
about translational research.”
How did you get this position, and how
long have you been the program director?
“I’ve always thought that medicine was an
important calling, and even considered going
14 | Reflections Summer ’17
Above: Pictured with Dr. Amir Tamiz is his wife, Tammy Deuster, and their daughters, Layla and Darya.
to medical school after graduating from Siena
Heights and ended up studying chemistry more
deeply. I thought that I might also be able to
help people by developing the medicines instead
of a doctor who prescribes the medicine. After
I finished grad school and my post-doc, I joined
biotech and spent the next many years working
with other scientists to progress potential thera-
peutics to clinical trials. Through my tenure in
biotech, I worked on some very exciting therapy
development projects such as cancer, diabetes
and celiac disease.
I joined the NIH in 2012—little over 20
years after I graduated from Siena Heights—
and I was able to bring my experience in drug
development to help with their initiative to sup-
port more translational research that would
help to ‘translate’ progress in basic research
toward treatments that can help patients. A
few examples of projects that we currently fund
are discovery and development of treatment
for stroke, Epilepsy, traumatic brain injury and
Muscular Dystrophy, to name a few. I was
promoted to Director of the Division of Transla-
tional research in 2016.”
What attracted you to the area of
neurology?
“The brain is a fascinating topic. I started
working on the brain in graduate school—my
dissertation was focused on thinking about how
to deliver therapeutics to the brain and how to
develop treatments to help patients with Parkin-
son’s disease. The body does its best to protect
the brain from toxins by keeping the blood sepa-
rated from brain fluid by a membrane we call the
blood brain barrier. This barrier also makes
it more difficult to deliver medicines to the brain.
I tried to optimize the design of a molecule to
more efficiently traverse that barrier. And, thus,
my fascination with the brain deepened.”
How much of your current position is that
of a scientist, and how much is being an
administrator?
“My current job is administrative—although
I leverage my first-hand experience of work-
ing in t