Renee Diane Wegrzyn | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health | |
Incumbent | |
| Assumed office October 11, 2022 | |
| Appointed by | Joe Biden |
| Deputy | Susan Monarez |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Personal details | |
| Born | November 25,1976 |
| Education | Georgia Institute of Technology (BS,MS,PhD) |
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.
Wegrzyn earned a Bachelor of Science and PhD in applied biology from Georgia Tech. [2] [3] [4]
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]
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.
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Stephen Joseph Lukasik was an American physicist who served in multiple high-level defense and scientific related positions for advancing the technologies and techniques for national defense and the detection and control of diverse types of weapons of mass destruction,especially nuclear devices. He was the second longest serving Director of DARPA - the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency –during which numerous new technologies including packet and internet protocols were developed. He was also the first chief scientist of the Federal Communications Commission where he created its Office of Science and Technology and which facilitated the commercial deployment of new technology that included spread spectrum technology.
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