CDRH Director Jeff Shuren to Leave FDA

Jeff Shuren, director of medical devices at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is retiring from a 15-year tenure with the agency. Michelle Tarver, deputy center director for transformation, will become the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH)’s acting director next week.

The transition will be effective on July 28, and Shuren will officially leave the FDA later this year following his assistance in the transition of the center director emeritus, according to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf.

“Today, the pandemic is in our rearview mirror, our Center is not only back on track, but I think better positioned and stronger than ever before, and our current vision has been achieved. This was not an easy decision for me to make because CDRH has been my home and you have been, and will continue to be, part of my family. But it is the right decision for our Center, and for me. I have my own new worlds still to explore,” Shuren said in an agency-wide statement provided to GovCIO Media & Research by a CDRH spokesperson.

During his tenure at the FDA, Shuren created and implemented initiatives to modernize the regulation of medical devices that focused on patients’ needs and the life cycles of products. He co-founded the International Medical Device Regulators Forum to create global standards for medical devices and the Medical Device Innovation Consortium to advance device safety and cybersecurity.

According to the office, Shuren’s government experience includes over 25 years with the FDA in various planning and policy positions. Shuren also served as a detailee on Senator Edward Kennedy’s staff on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

He also supervised and designed clinical studies on human reasoning as a staff volunteer in the National Institutes of Health’s Cognitive Neuroscience Section. He received his B.S. and M.D. from Northwestern University, followed by a medical internship in Boston, a neurology residency at Tufts New England Medical Center, and a fellowship in behavioral neurology and neuropsychology at the University of Florida.