A PhD Chemistry graduate of Georgia Tech and the recipient of a post-doctoral appointment with EPA, Victor De Jesús, PhD, was recently presented with the Jean Dussault Medal for Young Investigators, an award that honors a member of the International Society for Neonatal Screening who has made a significant contribution to neonatal or other population-based screening. In addition, he received the 2009 NCEH/ATSDR Honor Award for Excellence in Public Health Practice-Service.

It is no suprise that De Jesús received theses awards. For over 3 years that he has been with DLS, De Jesús has run the mass spectrometry program at the CDC’s Newborn Screening Quality Assurance Program (NSQAP), the sole provider of comprehensive performance evaluation tools and services to newborn screening laboratories worldwide. Thousands of children are living healthy and productive lives as a result of newborn screening and the NSQAP.

De Jesús has led the programmatic undertaking to achieve full program coverage for all of the disorders identified by the American College of Medical Genetics’ 2006 newborn screening Uniform Panel. As a result of his work, NSQAP will provide high-quality DBS QA materials to participants that contain all primary biomarkers of the ACMG’s Uniform Panel’s MS/MS-detectable conditions in early 2011.

De Jesús has also established a highly-recognized QA program for lysosomal storage disorders (LSD) in collaboration with the New York Department of Public Health, the University Children’s Hospital in Vienna, Austria, and Genzyme Corporation. He authored a seminal paper defining preparation and certification of the DBS reference materials for the LSD assays. De Jesús initiated this program and has grown it to serve more than 61 laboratories in 24 countries.

De Jesús has served on 4 committees of professional organizations, published 25 peer-reviewed papers, and given over 20 formal presentations at domestic and international professional meetings, with several by special invitation.

News-story provided by:
Craig Studer
Deputy Director, Division of Oral Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention