Last week the National Institutes of Health announced the appointment of Alan E. Guttmacher, MD, as director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), effective Aug. 1, 2010. For the past eight months Guttmacher served as NICHD acting director and began the process of developing a scientific vision for the institute. For the next year, NICHD staff will work to identify promising new scientific opportunities in the decade ahead.