Gregory A. Dufour will assume the titles of president and chief executive officer of Camden National Corp. on Jan. 1, 2009, Robert W. Daigle, the current president and CEO, announced Tuesday at the corporation’s annual meeting in Rockport. In addition to his new responsibilities, Dufour will remain the president and chief executive officer for Camden National Bank. Dufour, a native of Old Town and a graduate of the University of Maine, served as managing director of finance for IBEX Capital Markets in Boston after holding several management positions with Fleet Financial Group. He joined Camden National Corp. in April 2001 as senior vice president of finance, principal financial officer. In January 2005, he was appointed president and chief operating officer of Camden National Bank and was named president and chief executive officer in October 2006. Under Dufour’s leadership, Camden National Bank expanded into the western and Down East Maine markets with the mergers of UnitedKingfield Bank and Union Trust Co., respectively. Daigle, a native of Fort Kent and a graduate of the University of Maine, joined Camden National Bank as president and chief executive officer in January 1996. He was named president and CEO of Camden National Corp. in May 1999.

Dr. Rick Maser, a geneticist who shares three patents on DNA repair mechanisms, is joining The Jackson Laboratory to study biological mechanisms that are linked to cancers and to many of the harmful effects of aging. His appointment as Jackson Laboratory assistant professor begins in late June, as he ends a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Ron DePinho at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School. Maser’s work focuses on telomeres, structures that cap each end of chromosomes. When cells divide in the body’s natural renewal process, the chromosomes located in each cell nucleus must also duplicate themselves. Normally telomeres help to prevent damage during the duplication process. However, in a process that may be the very definition of aging, telomeres themselves erode after each cell division, so chromosomal damage is more likely to occur after multiple divisions. Maser investigates the genes involved in telomere erosion and its influence on cancer, degenerative disease, chronic inflammation and aging in humans.

Registered nurse Donna Goodspeed and clinical psychologist Petra Helbig are joining the staffs of The Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health and CancerCare of Maine at Eastern Maine Medical Center. They will work with cancer surgeons to offer presurgical cancer patients the opportunity to participate in clinical research by donating blood and tissue samples at the same time their tumor is removed. The specimens will be stored at the institute’s Maine Human Cancer Tissue Repository for use in cancer research. Goodspeed brings 31 years of oncology nursing experience in EMMC’s inpatient cancer unit and in CancerCare of Maine’s outpatient center. She will begin her new role on June 16. Helbig graduated from the Universitat Mannheim in Germany with a master’s degree in psychology. She has 14 years of clinical research experience, the last five in oncology research at Rapid City Regional Hospital’s Cancer Care Institute in South Dakota. She will begin on May 19.