By Helen J. Doyle has been appointed as the David and Lucile Packard Foundation's director of science. Dr. Doyle will direct and manage the foundation's Science Program, which last year made more than $80 million in grants focusing on support for efforts to increase the participation of minorities and women in engineering and science.

In accepting the position, Dr. Doyle said, “We plan to continue our support of creative, collaborative approaches to complex scientific problems.”

Prior to joining the foundation, Dr. Doyle was an academic coordinator with the Science and Health Education Partnership at the University of California, San Francisco, a partnership between the university and the San Francisco public schools to support science education reform.

She has served on several National Science Foundation review panels and worked with the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s middle school science curriculum review.

Carly Jurek of Los Altos has been crowned Miss Northern California American Pre-teen Queen 2001.

Jurek, who was first runner-up at the same contest last year, also won Miss Photogenic and Speech at this year’s event, held July 6 and 7 in San Jose.

The win qualifies Jurek for a trip to the national pageant over Thanksgiving week in Orlando, Fla.

American Coed Pageants, Inc., holds pageants nationwide annually to recognize and reward outstanding young women between the ages of 3 and 20 for their past and present accomplishments, while encouraging them to set and achieve high goals for the future.

More than $20,000 in cash scholarships and prizes are presented to award winners and runners-up in more than 10 categories of competition in six age groups. Jurek, 12, is in seventh grade at Egan Intermediate School.