Dr. Kim Pelis Named ONHM Director

Dr. Pelis has worked at the NIH for more than 15 years, primarily in the Office of the Director, where she was lead speech writer on the NIH Director's Presentations Team and an editor for the NIH Director's Blog.  Kim joins the ONHM with experience in both academic and public history.  She earned her Ph.D. in the history of medicine from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.  Prior to coming to the NIH, Kim was an assistant professor of medical history at the Uniformed Services University, across the street from the NIH, from 1998 to 2005. 

This July marks the 200^th Birthday of Gregor Mendel, father of modern genetics. From 1856 to 1863, Mendel conducted experiments crossbreeding pea plants, illuminating the mechanisms of trait inheritance. Researchers at NIH have made their own historic genetic breakthroughs. Notably, Dr. Marshall Nirenberg’s translation of the genetic code in 1961 revealed the secrets of DNA and earned him the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In 1989, the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) was founded to support the international effort to identify, map, and sequence the entire human genome. Nirenberg honored the pioneering work of Gregor Mendel when he visited Mendel’s Square in the Czech Republic, pictured here.