NIH names Dr Joni L Rutter as Director of National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has selected Joni L Rutter, PhD, as Director of NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). She officially began her role as NCATS Director on 6th November, 2022, NIH notified in a statement.

Dr Rutter will oversee a diverse portfolio of research activities focussed on improving the translational process of turning scientific discoveries into health interventions. The portfolio includes the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) programme, which has played an important role in the agency’s COVID-19 response. In addition, she will direct innovative research programmes to advance diagnoses and treatments, including gene therapies, for some of the more than 10,000 known rare diseases. She will also lead labs at NIH that drive team science with the private sector to create and test innovative methods for improving the drug development process, the statement said.

It further noted that Dr Rutter joined NCATS in 2019 as Deputy Director. She has created strong networks across public and private sectors to inform the existing and developing NCATS programmes, and significantly expanded these efforts as acting director. She has championed approaches for leveraging real-world data and Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) to rapidly address public health questions. In the area of rare disease research, Dr Rutter led an initiative that used data from healthcare systems to calculate approximate healthcare costs for the millions of people with rare diseases. This, and related initiatives prompted recommendations, such as enhancing the collection of rare disease patient data, to reduce the economic and medical burdens facing this community. She also led the National COVID Cohort Collaborative from inception to implementation, and it is now one of the largest collections of secure and deidentified clinical data in the US for COVID-19 research.

Prior to joining NCATS, Dr Rutter established the scientific programmes within the NIH All of Us research programme to advance precision medicine. The programme has been focussed on ensuring that the one million US participants, who enroll, represent all communities and backgrounds. During her time at NIH, she also served as Director, Division of Neuroscience and Behaviour, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), where she oversaw and developed research portfolios in basic and clinical neuroscience, concluded the statement.