Dr. William Slikker, Jr. was the director of FDA’s National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR) before his retirement. He received his Ph.D. in pharmacology and toxicology from the University of California at Davis. Dr. Slikker holds adjunct professorships in the Department of Pediatrics, as well as the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. He has held committee chairmanships or elected offices in several scientific societies including the Teratology Society (serving as president) and the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (chair, Developmental Pharmacology Section and member, Program Committee). Dr. Slikker is also the co-founder and past president of the MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society. He is currently associate editor for NeuroToxicology and associate editor for the “Environmental Health? section of Experimental Biology and Medicine. He is the past president of The Academy of Toxicological Sciences and the Society of Toxicology. He is a recipient of the 2014 George H. Scott Memorial Award from The Toxicology Forum and was invited to present the Warkany Lecture at the 2015 annual meeting of the Teratology Society. In early 2019, the Academy of Toxicological Sciences selected Dr. Slikker to receive the prestigious Mildred S. Christian Career Achievement Award. The Society for Birth Defects Research and Prevention selected Dr. Slikker to be the recipient of the 2022 Edward W. Carney Distinguished Service Award.Dr. Slikker has authored or co-authored over 380 publications in the areas of transplancentalpharmacokinetics, developmental neurotoxicology, neuroprotection, systems biology, and risk assessment. Dr. Slikker’s recent research has highlighted the concern for thousands of infants and toddlers who undergo longer-duration general anesthesia. He has performed research with his team and published over 25 peer-reviewed papers outlining the issue of brain-cell death and cognitive-function deficits in animal models that may result from several hours of anesthesia at a critical time of development. He has also, with the use of in vitro and in vivo techniques in rodents and nonhuman primates, defined possible mechanisms of toxicity and protective pathways to prevent the detrimental effects of general anesthesia. Through these and related scientific contributions, he has identified and characterized a host of minimally invasive biomarkers of neurotoxicity including the use of preclinical imaging (MRI, MicroPET/CT), genomic and lipidomic analysis, and modeling approaches to characterize and quantify adult and developmental neurotoxicity. He has also served on several national/international advisory panels for ILSI, HESI, CIIT, EPA, NIEHS, NAS, NIH and WHO.