BAR HARBOR – As research and staff levels at The Jackson Laboratory continue to grow, the lab has decided to create a position to direct how the lab presents itself to the outside world.

To fill the post of director of communications, Jackson Lab has hired a man who has 20 years’ experience in promoting biotechnology in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina.

Barry Teater, now the director of corporate communications for North Carolina Biotechnology Center, said last week that he expects to start his new job at the lab on Dec. 31.

“I think it will be a fairly easy transition,” Teater said by phone from his North Carolina office. “It’s not an exact fit with what I’ve been doing, but it’s pretty darn close.”

With his current job, Teater deals with research that runs the full biotechnology gamut from human health care and nanotechnology to agriculture and biofuels. At Jackson Lab, his focus will be more limited, concentrated on the lab’s dual mission of studying genetics and how it correlates to human disease and of breeding the mice that make such research possible.

Jackson Lab may not cover as many areas of scientific study as the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, Teater said, but its work is not less significant.

“It’s a well-run organization with a noble purpose,” he said. “That attracted me.”

The creation of the position will consolidate all of the lab’s public affairs and external communications in one office, according to Teater and lab officials. In a statement, Michael Hyde, the lab’s vice president for advancement and external relations, said that with the new post, the lab will improve the way it informs the public about its work and mission.

“We want to do a better job of getting our message out to friends and supporters, and Barry Teater is just the person to take on this task,” Hyde wrote. “His many successes at the North Carolina Biotech Center suit him perfectly for sharing our scientific discoveries with the world.”

Since 1990, the number of employees at the lab has more than doubled, from 579 to approximately 1,300, and its operating revenue is now eight times higher, increasing from less than $19 million to $150 million.

Teater, 46, a native of Lexington, Ky., said he first heard about the position in August from an executive recruiting firm. A divorced father of two grown daughters, he said he has visited Bar Harbor and is looking forward to being able to go kayaking and hiking in the area.

Teater said he has rented a house that is only a mile away from the lab’s Route 3 campus.

“I absolutely fell in love with [Bar Harbor], as so many people have,” he said. “I really look forward to moving up there. It’s going to be very refreshing to live in a small town again.”