Renee Wegrzyn

Renee Diane Wegrzyn (born November 25, 1976)[1] is an American applied biologist who has served as the inaugural director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health since October 2022.

Renee Diane Wegrzyn
Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health
Incumbent
Assumed office
October 11, 2022
Appointed byJoe Biden
DeputySusan Monarez
Preceded byPosition established
Personal details
BornNovember 25, 1976
EducationGeorgia Institute of Technology (BS, MS, PhD)

Education

Wegrzyn earned a Bachelor of Science and PhD in applied biology from Georgia Tech.[2][3][4]

Career

From 2003 to 2006, Wegrzyn worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg University. From 2006 to 2008, she worked as the assay development group leader for Adlyfe, a biotechnology company. In 2009, she was a senior scientist at Meso Scale Discovery and in 2012, she was a fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. From 2009 to 2016, she worked as a senior lead technologist at Booz Allen Hamilton. From 2016 to 2020, she served as a program manager in the Biological Technologies Office of DARPA, where she specialized in synthetic biology and biosecurity. Since 2018, she has been a senior advisor to the Nuclear Threat Initiative.[5] In 2020, she joined Ginkgo Bioworks as vice president of business development.[6]

In September 2022, President Joe Biden announced his appointment of Wegrzyn to be the inaugural director of the recently-created Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health under the National Institutes of Health within the Department of Health and Human Services. Wegrzyn was sworn in by Secretary Xavier Becerra on October 11, 2022.[7]

References
  1. Kaiser, Jocelyn (September 12, 2022). "Biden's New Biomedical Innovation Agency Gets Its First Director". Science. Retrieved September 22, 2022.
  2. "President Biden Announces Intent to Appoint Dr. Renee Wegrzyn as Inaugural Director of Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)". The White House. 2022-09-12. Retrieved 2022-09-12.
  3. "DARPA Forward | Dr. Renee Wegrzyn". forward.darpa.mil. Retrieved 2022-09-12.
  4. 'Genetic, biochemical, and physiological study of yeast prion protein aggregation' (Ph.D. Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2003)
  5. "Biden appoints former government scientist as first leader of ARPA-H". STAT. 2022-09-12. Retrieved 2022-09-12.
  6. Stolberg, Sheryl Gay (2022-09-12). "Biden Picks Biotech Executive to Lead New Biomedical Research Agency". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-09-12.
  7. Becerra, Xavier [@SecBecerra] (October 11, 2022). "On the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's "Moonshot" speech, @POTUS announced he was appointing Dr. Renee Wegrzyn as the first director of ARPA-H to launch bold and ambitious medical research programs. Was glad to swear her in today and begin that journey!" (Tweet). Retrieved 2022-10-14 – via Twitter.
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