ICCIDD has a new executive director: Swiss scientist Michael Zimmermann. Since 2005, Zimmermann has been editor of ICCIDD’s flagship IDD Newsletter. Zimmermann pledged renewed emphasis on protecting expectant mothers and infants during a child’s “first thousand days” of life by “focusing the scientific and technical strengths of ICCIDD and drawing on the unique strength of our multi-disciplinary network to eliminate iodine deficiency in these first ‘1000 days’.”

Zimmermann summarized: “Micronutrient deficiency represents the most widespread form of global malnutrition. In recent decades micronutrient malnutrition has surpassed the problem of underweight due to food insecurity. As many as two billion people, representing one third of the world’s population, have low iodine intakes. Iodine deficiency early in the life cycle can cause irreparable damage to the brain and irreversible intellectual and motor impairment.”

Dr. Zimmermann received his M.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where he was president of the AOA Medical Honor Society. He did his postgraduate medical training at the University of California in San Francisco, and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, where he received a M.Sc. in Nutritional Science. He is currently Senior Scientist in the Laboratory for Human Nutrition at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETHZ). He is also Professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, where he holds a Chair in International Health and Micronutrients. His research focuses on nutrition and metabolism, with a focus on iodine deficiency. He has dual citizenship, in the U.S. and in Switzerland.