NEW members have been appointed to the boards of the Economic Development Board (EDB) and the Agency for Science, Technology & Research (A*STAR), with effect from tomorrow.

Mr Harish Manwani, chief operating officer of Unilever, and Mr Mark A. Nelson, president of international products at Chevron International, will join the EDB board.

They will replace Mr Amadou Diallo, chief executive officer of DHL Freight, and Ms Deborah Henretta, Procter & Gamble's group president of global beauty, skin care, cosmetics and personal care. Mr Diallo and Ms Henretta will be stepping down upon completion of their terms today.

A*Star will get three new board members: Prof Isaac Ben-Israel, chairman of the Israel Space Agency and the Israel National Council for Research & Development; Prof Sir Keith O'Nions, the president and rector of Imperial College London; and Prof Jonathan Knowles, who is Professor Emeritus at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland. Prof Knowles is also Distinguished Professor at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland FIMM, Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine.

The three board members stepping down from A*Star are Prof Sir Alex Markham, professor of medicine at the University of Leeds; Lord Ronald Oxburgh, deputy chairman of the Science and Engineering Research Council and House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology (UK), and Prof Charles Zukoski, provost and executive director of academic affairs at the University of Buffalo in the United States.