SIU Med School Names Interim Associate Dean for Research

Linda A. Toth, Ph.D., D.V.M., has been named interim associate dean for research and faculty affairs at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. She will continue as director of laboratory animal medicine and professor of pharmacology. [Note: She was named associate dean in August 2005.]

Toth is responsible for promoting and coordinating SIU's research and directing core support offices including grants and contracts, laboratory animal medicine, research services, and statistics and research consulting. Currently, there are more than 190 research projects, totaling $25.4 million, funded by outside sources. About two-thirds are from federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

"I am pleased that Linda Toth will lead the next phases of the medical school’s research efforts, particularly since she herself has been successful at securing national research grants," said Dr. J. Kevin Dorsey, dean and provost of SIU School of Medicine. "We also thank Ed Moticka for all his efforts to grow our research enterprise and salute his dedication to SIU, which covers 26 years as a researcher, a teacher and more recently, an administrator."

Toth currently has three active NIH grants, totally more than $3 million. Her research interests are neural-immune interactions, including the mechanisms of communication between the peripheral immune system and the brain, the role of immune response in the regulation of sleep, and genetic modulation of sleep propensity.

Toth succeeds Edward J. Moticka, Ph.D., who has retired. A professor of medical microbiology and immunology and of surgery, Moticka joined SlU's basic science faculty in 1978 and was named to the associate dean position in 1992. He is relocating to Scottsdale, Ariz., to become director of research for Scottsdale Healthcare.

Toth came to SIU in 2000 after working as an attending veterinarian (1992-99) and associate member of the infectious diseases department at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. She also held faculty appointments in comparative medicine and physiology and biophysics departments at the University of Tennessee in Memphis (1988-99).

Toth’s honors include the Nathan R. Brewer Scientific Achievement Award, awarded in 2002 by the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science (AALAS). She previously received AALAS’s Research and Technical Publications Awards. In 2002, she also was selected as a fellow for the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine .

Toth earned her bachelor's degree at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh (1972) and her master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Pittsburgh (1975, 1980). She earned her veterinary medicine degree at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. (1986).

She was a postdoctoral research associate at Pittsburgh (1980-81) and at Purdue (1982-85) as well as at NIH’s National Heart Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md. (1981-82).

She is certified as a diplomate by the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine and is a member of the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Association of Laboratory Animal Science, the Society for Neuroscience, the Sleep Research Society and the American Physiological Society. She is an NIH reviewer and a member of the external scientific panel for the National Health Lung and Blood Institute’s Program on Genomic Applications. She is the author of more than 90 journal articles, book chapters and reviews.

A native of Pennsylvania, Toth is married to Thomas W. Gardiner. She is the daughter of Frank and Betty Toth of Cary, N.C.

Moticka began his academic career as an assistant professor of cell biology at Southwestern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas (1972‑78). He was a National Academy of Science visiting scientist at the Czechoslovak Academy of Science (1971‑72) and spent one year as an NIH postdoctoral trainee at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Moticka earned his bachelor's degree at Kalamazoo College (1966) and his doctoral degree in anatomy at the University of Illinois Graduate College at the Medical Center (1970) where he was also an NIH predoctoral trainee in anatomical sciences for four years.

Moticka's teaching interests includedimmunology, cell biology and human anatomy while his research interests include Tcell regulation particularly in autoimmune disease. His research support included grants from the NIH, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Eye Institute and the Illinois Society for Prevention of Blindness.

A native of Brookfield, Ill., Moticka and his wife Jane Adrian have a blended family with five children. His mother, Vivian Moticka, still resides in Brookfield.

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