Lorette C. Javois, Ph.D., joined the staff of the DBSV Branch in 2000 and is responsible for administering the program on organogenesis, including the areas of limb development, somitogenesis, chondrogenesis, and myogenesis. She received her doctorate in biology from Purdue University, where she studied pattern formation using the developing vertebrate limb as a model system. She continued to study aspects of pattern formation using the coelenterate, hydra, while doing her postdoctoral training at the Developmental Biology Center at the University of California, Irvine. Prior to coming to NICHD, she spent 13 years on the biology faculty at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., conducting research on cellular and molecular pattern formation and teaching developmental biology and anatomy. Dr. Javois coordinates the Branch's Birth Defects Initiative including the NICHD Structural Birth Defects Working Group, co-chairs the Trans-NIH Zebrafish Coordinating Committee, and serves as the NICHD's representative the trans-NIH Knockout Mouse Project (currently, the phenotyping effort known as KOMP2).