Buckley said that she didn’t know exactly which hospital-related issues she will be working on.

But the hospitals threaten to become a time consuming topic.

Hyman has said his office is paying close attention to developments at the Boston teaching hospitals affiliated with, but not owned by Harvard.

The Beth-Israel Deaconess Medical Center—where more than a third of Harvard’s medical students and residents receive training—remains in dire financial straits and Hyman has said that the University would hope to avert any sale of the hospital to a for-profit company.

Hyman said this winter that he had offered his office’s assistance to Joseph P. Martin, dean of the Medical School, to help retain medical faculty threatened by the hospital’s uncertain future.

Buckley said her resume qualifies her to carry out these and other tasks.

After graduating from Harvard College in 1974, Buckley earned a doctorate in neurobiology from Harvard Medical School in 1980. After post-doctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco, Buckley returned to Harvard in 1988 and worked as a basic scientist at the Medical School for over a decade.

She has always felt she would make a good administrator, given her ability to see the bigger picture, Buckley said.

Last year, when a new position at FAS was created dealing with the sciences, Buckley decided to apply.

As assistant dean, Buckley said she gained administrative experience dealing with both the day to day issues with the science Faculty—appointments, promotions and leaves—but also long-term initiatives and programs. She also sat on a variety of faculty committees, including the Standing Committee on Professional Misconduct, the Systems Neuroscience Initiative and the Standing Committee on the Status of Women.

Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles said he was sad to see Buckley leave FAS.

“She has taken excellent care of our science departments, and we shall miss her wisdom and skill,” Knowles wrote in an e-mail.

Buckley said she was excited to get started in her new job today.

“Its going to be a pretty steep learning curve,” she said, but added she was confident Hyman and others could bring her up to speed.

—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.