Headquarters:
Mr. H. Hakomori joined as Administrative Clerk on 1 July.
Mr. Akihiko Tanaka joined as Senior Liaison Officer (Japan) on 1 August.
Professor Hans van Ginkel assumed office as Rector on 1 September.

UNU/WIDER:
Dr. Matti Tapani Pohjola joined as Principal Academic Officer on 1 September.

UNU/INRA:
Dr. Kunadu Acheampong joined as Programme and Administration Officer on 5 September.

UNU/IAS:
Ms. Taeko Morioka joined as Secretary on 18 August.
Mr. Eric Williams joined as Research Associate on 1 September.
Ms. Toshie Honda was reassigned from the Headquarters as Senior Administrative Assistant on 18 September.

We will miss our colleagues who have recently departed for new careers and lives beyond the UNU:

Headquarters:
Mr. Yoshinobu Hiraishi as Senior Liaison Officer (Japan) on 31 July.
Professor Heitor Gurgulino de Souza as Rector on 31 August.
Ms. Akiko Hara as Senior Secretary on 30 September.

UNU/INTECH:
Ms. Mary-Ann Schenk as Research Assistant on 30 September.

UNU/IAS:
Ms. Tomoko Morishita as Secretary on 31 July.

(This section reflects personnel changes from July to September 1997.)

Obituaries British biochemist and Nobel laureate John Kendrew passed away on 23 August in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Sir John had been a dedicated UNU Council member for many years and was serving as a member of the UNU/IAS Board. He held academic posts at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Sir John shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1962 with his teacher and colleague, Max Perutz. The prize was awarded for their pioneer work in solving the structure of protein molecules. Both scientists formed the Medical Research Unit for Molecular Biology in 1947. The Cambridge institution later attained worldwide fame for its work on the structure of human muscle protein. Sir John was 80 years old. Chinese biologist Li Hebiao passed away on 10 September in Nanjing, China. Li Hebiao had been a professor at Nanjing's Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences and was a UNU-Kirin Fellow. Dr. Li was a relentless scientific explorer, specializing in the molecular genetics of rice. His particular interest was in mapping and cloning rice genes. Dr. Li applied for the UNU-Kirin Fellowship so that he could come to Japan and learn new molecular biological techniques, such as DNA recombination and sequencing. He leaves behind a wife and 7-year-old daughter.