Health IT Summit 23

Sanja Basaric currently serves as the Artificial Intelligence Program Lead within the Office of the Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In this role she helps oversee the implementation of the enterprise AI strategy and supports the Department in expanding the use of Trustworthy AI to drive mission, manage risks, and accelerate operational outcomes.

A dedicated public servant, Sanja has supported the Federal government’s civilian, veteran, and defense health agencies for the past 15+ years in biomedical research, public-private partnerships, program evaluation and management, emerging technologies, data governance and compliance, and cybersecurity. She is an accomplished strategic leader, entrepreneur, and leadership coach with extensive experience in leading mission-driven teams, developing comprehensive solutions, and forging meaningful relationships across sectors.

Amanda Cournoyer is the director of data and interoperability for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office (EHRM-IO).

In this role, she is responsible for VA EHRM-IO’s strategic planning, coordination, and execution of technical solutions across the electronic health record (EHR) ecosystem to ensure and enhance interoperability for intra-agency, interagency and external partners integrated health information technology capabilities for secure exchange, access, and use of accessible electronic health information, as authorized under applicable state and federal laws, at the point of care.

As a U.S. Navy Veteran and career VA employee with over 20 years of exemplary federal service, she is a constant and strong advocate for our nation’s Veterans, fulfilling VA’s mission and demonstrating VA’s core values. She has always pressed to modernize, improve, and streamline organizational change initiatives, as evidenced by her leadership through strategic and transformational delivery of numerous large-scale enterprise modernization initiatives enabling and enhancing interoperability solutions for accessibility to and delivery of prompt, effective, and safe healthcare and benefits for our Veterans, service members, their beneficiaries, and caregivers.

Cournoyer holds a master’s degree in military art and science from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Bachelor of Science in business information systems management from Eastern Connecticut State University and an associate degree in public relations from Three Rivers Community College.

For two decades, Ben Cushing has been a leader in emerging technology solutions across multiple industries and is committed to radical innovation in healthcare. Before joining Red Hat, he served as the Chief Technology Officer for MDLogix, a behavioral health IT firm supporting Johns Hopkins Medicine. There he architected and brought to market a behavioural health cloud platform for use with employer, healthcare, and education markets.

In addition to supporting analytics and operations at the National Institutes of Health for 6 years, Cushing had the opportunity to practice a scaled agile framework with Accenture where he led the technical architecture and design for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Electronic Health Management Platform, an industry leading Health Management and Care Coordination platform serving 9 million patients.

His tenure at Accenture began with the acquisition of Agilex, where he designed LSI solutions, developed systems to automate the Post-9/11 GI bill, and supported in-theater data collection and analytics tools. While at Agilex, Ben architected and led the development of a mobile Software Development Kit, still in use today by the VA to produce more than 60 applications.

Dr. Neil C. Evans is the acting program executive director (PED) of VA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office. Dr. Evans reports to VA’s Deputy Secretary and is responsible for coordinating agency efforts to implement a modernized federal electronic health record (EHR) across the VA enterprise, overseeing the functional, technical, and program management elements of the new EHR program.

Dr. Evans also serves as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology and CIO, as well as the Chief Officer for the Office of Connected Care in the Veterans Health Administration, overseeing VA’s expansive telehealth program and Veteran-facing digital health capabilities including VA’s patient portal, mobile program, and other initiatives connecting Veterans with their VA health care teams.

Dr. Evans has over 20 years of experience in VA and remains an active primary care physician, managing a panel of patients in the Primary Care clinic at the Washington, D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He has served in both clinical and IT-related leadership roles at the Medical Center level and at VA Central Office.

Dr. Evans began his VA career after completing medical school at Johns Hopkins University and training in Internal Medicine through the Osler Medical Residency, also at Johns Hopkins. He is board-certified in both Internal Medicine and Clinical Informatics and holds a faculty appointment as a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Prior to his medical training, he received a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware.

Kathleen is a leader focused on large scale responsible technology transformation for our client’s most critical and sensitive mission areas. She is leading the development and expansion of Maximus’ AI and Advanced Analytics portfolio within Federal Technology Consulting Services. An expert in AI, data science, strategy, and change management, Kathleen has more than 20 years of experience working with clients across the Federal Government.

She focuses on the convergence of mission and AI with a special emphasis on the human elements of adoption. This includes working with organizations on responsibly thinking about data as an asset, the evolution of the technical architecture to eliminate continual redesign, the evolution of human roles to allow more time for critical thinking and building ethical AI controls and measures into the fabric of an organization.

Prior to joining Maximus, she served as a Director at Booz Allen Hamilton leading highly technical cross-functional teams through transformation. She established and scaled Booz Allen’s AI strategy and training capabilities, that center on empowering organizations to grow their ability to harness analytics for data-driven decision making. She was a founding member of the team that developed Booz Allen’s award-winning Data Science 5K Challenge program, which focused on upskilling the firm’s data science workforce to help clients use data in new ways. Booz Allen’s artificial intelligence (AI) practice. Kathleen led the development of the firm’s AI governance and risk management procedures and operating practices as a part of the development of Booz Allen’s Responsible AI efforts.

Kathleen has an M.S. in intelligence analysis from Mercyhurst College and a B.S. in business administration from Georgetown University. She holds a Change Management Advanced Practitioner certification from Georgetown and a Psychology of Leadership graduate certificate from Cornell University.

Josh Fessel, MD, PhD is the senior clinical advisor in NCATS’ Division of Clinical Innovation, where he serves as a liaison between basic and clinical scientists and helps build bridges between multiple stakeholders to ensure that the most innovative clinical science moves forward. In this role, he brings multiple skills sets to bear – pulmonologist/intensivist, basic and translational scientist, medical officer, program director, advisor to multiple US Government agencies and initiatives – to advance how knowledge is generated, how discoveries are translated, how advances in health research and care are equitably made available to all, and to ensure that these continue to improve well into the future.

Mr. John E. Holloway Jr. is the Director for the Modernization of the DoD Global Public Safety Communications Ecosystem within DISA. He is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the DISA element that is overseeing the development and implementation of the NG9-1-1 across the DoD Enterprise, Service Components, other Federal Agencies, State 9-1-1 Coordinators/Executives and various Public Safety Communications professional organizations. He is also responsible for the High Frequency Communications effort at DISA.

John came to DISA from the DoD-CIO. He was the DoD Subject Matter Expert for communications and Information Sharing for the DoD response to Humanitarian Assistance Disaster Relief (HADR) efforts, within the office of the DoD-CIO.

Mr. Holloway has been involved in various aspects of DoD communications over the last 53 years. He retired from the U.S. Navy in 1988 as a Cryptologic Technician (Radio) Chief Petty Officer after 20 years of service. While on active duty he had three tours at the National Security Agency, served at many locations around the Globe, on numerous ships and was active in supporting special operations in Vietnam.

As an Executive Architect within the Office of Enterprise Architecture, Arun has varied experience in the ServiceNow ecosystem, and provides executive advisory services to customer leadership in the Federal Civilian space. The advisory services are targeted at envisioning the power of the platform across customer organizations, delivering desired outcomes and value realization.

Ian co-leads VHA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) efforts. His primary focus with be coordinating with VISNs and VA medical centers on their EHR requirements, in partnership with the EHRM Integration Office (EHRM IO) and the VHA
Office of Health Informatics (OHI).

In his most recent role as the Executive Director of the OHI Strategic Investment Management (SIM), Ian led the SIM mission to facilitate sound decision making by VHA for health-focused IT investments. SIM ensures leadership has a comprehensive understanding of needed VHA business capabilities including business requirements, processes, information needs, IT strategy & priorities and investment analysis From 2018 through 2021, Ian served as Deputy Director, Office of Healthcare Transformation (OHT) where he provided executive leadership on project management, strategic implementation, and health systems engineering. He was also the executive sponsor for the VHA Change Management (CM) effort, establishing a CM program and expanding CM Practices across VHA.

He previously served as Branch Chief, Architecture & Cloud Strategies for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Earlier in his career, he was Director of Architecture & Interoperability for a mid-size consulting company, and VP of Training at a small business. Ian enjoys teaching and mentoring across many disciplines, from having been a full-time kayak instructor, to an instructor of formal enterprise architecture courses. He has also guest lectured on health IT and enterprise architecture topics at both MIT and Georgetown University.

Admiral Rachel L. Levine serves as the 17th Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the head of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. She fights every day to improve the health and well-being of all Americans. She’s working to help our nation overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and build a stronger foundation for a healthier future – one in which every American can attain their full health potential. ADM Levine’s storied career, first, as a physician in academic medicine focused on the intersection between mental and physical health, treating children, adolescents, and young adults. Then as Pennsylvania’s Physician General and later as Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health, she addressed COVID-19, the opioid crisis, behavioral health and other public health challenges.

Ed Macko is the Global Vice President & General Manager for Healthcare & Life Sciences (HCLS) industry. In his role(s), Ed works with clients worldwide to leverage information technology to solve critical business problems. Ed provides strategic technical and business leadership to drive digital transformation across the HCLS clients (health systems, health plans, life sciences) and governments including working with business partners. Some of Mr. Macko’s activities include technical and digital business strategy, solution design, architecture, business development, presales client engagement, product development, and industry standards. This includes leveraging capabilities like Cognitive Computing, AI/Machine Learning, Automation, Security, Blockchain & Quantum Computing across solutions for Enterprise Health Analytics, Population Health, Interoperability, 360 View of Patient/Member, Real World Evidence, Consumer Engagement, Customer Care, Staffing Optimization, Fraud, Supply Chain, Clinical Trials, Drug Discovery, and Translational Medicine. These solutions & capabilities spanning various data domains across the continuum of care (clinical, financial, administrative, genomics, consumer, social determinants, etc.) to deliver business relevant outcomes for clients. My expertise includes strategy, architecture, development, deployment and support across hybrid, multi cloud environments infused by AI in a highly regulated environments (e.g. HIPAA, HITRUST, GxP, GDPR, FISMA).

Ed received a bachelor’s degree with honors including a double major in information systems and business administration with a minor in Computer Science from Appalachian State University. He has worked for IBM for the past 25+ years in product/solution development, business development, and client engagement roles including last 15 years as the HCLSCTO. Ed previously worked as a Software Engineer for NASA and commercial airline industry.

As deputy director of the Office of Policy at ONC, Ms. Myers is focused on leading teams implementing the 21st Century Cures Act health IT provisions on interoperability for patient access, information blocking, and health IT for specialty settings and sites of service. She also leads the policy team working on the health IT provisions of the SUPPORT Act of December 2018 which established initiatives for Opioid Use Disorder prevention and treatment. Her portfolio includes supporting health IT policy for HHS partner initiatives including CMS, CDC, SAMHSA and HRSA as well as state health IT infrastructure initiatives.

CDR Scott Miller is a USPHS officer and Physician Assistant currently serving as the Director, Office of Health Services (OHS) within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO). OHS maintains a comprehensive health program portfolio which includes Marine Medicine, Aviation Medicine, Diving Medicine, Behavioral Health, and Medical Affairs. Populations served include NOAA Corps Officers, civilian Wage Mariners, Aviators, Divers, Health Scientists, Researchers, and other personnel working aboard NOAA controlled ships and aircraft.
Prior to coming aboard NOAA, CDR Miller served the Indian Health Service for eighteen years in a variety of leadership positions. While serving in a large Tribal Health Organization in Fairbanks, Alaska his roles included Director of Telemedicine and Health Innovation, Deputy Medical Director, Air Ambulance Service Director, Primary Care Team Lead, and Advanced Practice Provider Supervisor. CDR Miller has a focus on health program management and development as well as quality improvement and innovation.

CDR Miller was born and raised in Tampa, Florida, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Microbiology. He later acquired a Master of Clinical Medical Science upon completion of the Physician Assistant Program at Barry University in Miami, Florida. Despite a passion and aptitude for cardiology, he left a highly acclaimed cardiology practice in Miami to provide care to the underserved Alaska Native population in the remote village of Galena, Alaska. CDR Miller’s driving force is his family. He enjoys outdoor activities such as camping, fishing, and hunting.

Dr. Susan Coller Monarez is a globally recognized leader with over twenty years of experience in health innovation. She currently serves as the Deputy Director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). ARPA-H supports the development of high-impact research to drive biomedical and health breakthroughs to deliver transformative, sustainable, and equitable health solutions for everyone.

Prior to this position, Dr. Monarez founded the Center for Innovation at the Health Resources and Services Administration, the largest funder of safety-net health programs in the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Monarez has also served at the White House as the Assistant Director for National Health Security and International Affairs in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and as the Director of Medical Preparedness Policy on the National Security Council (NSC). In both White House roles, she led multiple efforts to enhance the nation’s biomedical innovation capabilities. Dr. Monarez has led the development of several Presidential-level national strategies, action plans, and policy directives related to domestic and global health.

Prior to the White House, Dr. Monarez served in leadership positions at the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) within the Department of Homeland Security and the Biomedical Advanced Research Projects Agency (BARDA) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In addition to leadership roles within the Federal government, Dr. Monarez has been called upon to serve on numerous advisory panels to include at the National Academies of Science, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, and the Federal Experts Science Advisory Panel. Dr. Monarez has also served as the U.S. representative on several international cooperative initiatives including with the European Union, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom in bilateral and multilateral engagements.
Dr. Monarez was an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy fellow and a research scientist in microbiology and immunology at the University of Wisconsin and at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Ernest Moy, M.D., M.P.H., is the Executive Director of the Office of Health Equity of the VHA. This office manages and supports efforts to understand and reduce disparities in health and health care affecting Veterans. Currently, the office is coordinating analyses and messaging related to disparities in COVID-19 testing and treatment among Veterans and building tools to address structural bias, discrimination, and social determinants of health.

Prior to joining VHA, he was a Medical Officer in the Office of Analysis and Epidemiology at the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At CDC, he studied rural health disparities, analyzed linked hospital-vital statistics data to identify care patterns that placed patients at high risk for opioid poisoning death, and developed new data visualizations and partnerships for disseminating health statistics.

Prior to CDC, he was Director of the Division in the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) that designed and produced the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report, submitted annually to Congress, and related web tools. He has also worked as a Director of Research and Assistant Vice President at the Association of American Medical Colleges, Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and Emergency Care Physician at the Baltimore VAMC. He was selected to serve as the first Academy Health Innovator-in-Residence.

As a genetic counselor, geneticist, and psychologist, Vivian OTA WANG’s domestic and global experiences in research, education, science policy, and ethics span the psychological, genomic, nanoscale, and data sciences. She currently applies her expertise in race and racial identity, community engagement, ethics, and research participation protections to data access and sharing and emerging technologies as the Policy, Ethics, and COVID Lead at the Office of Data Sharing Strategy at the National Institutes of Health where is responsible for leading policy, ethics, equity and COVID activities in data science (artificial intelligence, data access and sharing policy development and implementation) and emerging technologies.

Prior to joining public service, she was a practicing genetic counselor, and then held tenure-track faculty positions at Rutgers, Arizona State, and Vanderbilt universities where she maintained a research program focused on racial identity, bias, and multicultural competencies related to research ethics, program development and evaluation, and community engagement in psychology, genomics, and public health. Dr. OTA WANG’s accomplishments have been recognized by university, professional, and national awards, honors, and commendations. She received a BA in Biology (Colorado College), an MS in Genetic Counseling (University of Colorado) and an MPhil and PhD in Counseling Psychology (Columbia University). She is a Fellow of the American Medical Association (American College of Medical Genetics) and American Psychological Association (Divisions 17 & 45), Diplomate of the American Board of Medical Genetics and American Board of Genetic Counseling, and a licensed psychologist.

Amber Pearson is the Deputy CISO and Executive Director of Information Security Policy and Strategy for the Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Information and Technology. In this role, she is the principal advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Information Security (DAS), and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). She is responsible for advancing cybersecurity and privacy strategies that balance requirements with business objectives in support of the VA mission. She oversees the implementation and promulgation of cybersecurity policies throughout the department with the primary goal of ensuring information security risks are managed using a risk-based approach within Federal guidelines and industry standards.

Prior to her role as Executive Director, Ms. Pearson served as the Head of U.S. Government Security Compliance Engagement at Amazon Web Services (AWS) with the responsibility of providing security assurances of AWS security and privacy claims to regulators, auditors, and customers. She had direct oversight and responsibility for delivering business outcomes that aligned with U.S. regulatory compliance. Ms. Pearson led the charge in creating a Chatbot technology that aimed to build trust with customers and streamline compliance inquiries for regulated customers. Through this development, AWS had the capability to enhance the customer experience, improve response times, and reduce common security compliance friction points.

Before joining the private industry, Ms. Pearson served in public service leadership roles for over 19 years with the last position as the Deputy CISO and Director of Compliance at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). In this role, she led the security implementation of a collaboration tool under the White House Taskforce for COVID-19 with the primary focus and goal of delivering a secure collaboration tool to be used across multiple agencies in response to a global pandemic. Under her leadership, the agency’s security posture improved significantly, earning her the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Business Excellence Award for transforming FEMA’s cybersecurity program. Ms. Pearson’s unwavering commitment to safeguarding federal government systems and providing actionable security guidance has led to innovative solutions to improve cybersecurity programs.

Steven Posnack serves as the Deputy National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. In this role, he advises the national coordinator, leads the execution of ONC’s mission, and represents ONC’s interests at a national and international level. In conjunction with the national coordinator, Steve oversees ONC’s federal coordination, regulatory policy, public-private initiatives, and the overall implementation of statutory authorities and requirements, such as those from the 21st Century Cures Act and HITECH Act.

Acting Director, Data Management and Analytics, Clinical Informatics and Data Management Officer, Office of Health Informatics, VHA

Doctor Scott is a pediatric cardiologist and clinical informatics specialist who has many years of experience in the management of electronic health records and other health information technology in both the Military and Veterans health care systems.
A 30-year Army medical corps Veteran, he transitioned from military service to the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) in 2020 to work in its Office of Health Informatics. As the Acting Director of the Data Management and Analytics division, he supports the maturation of VHA data governance and helps to apply VA’s data management strategy to enterprise data management platforms. He also serves as the Co-Chair of the VHA Data Governance Council and VHA’s voting representatives on the VA level Data Governance Council. In these roles he is part of the team working to unlock the enormous potential of big data analytics to promote health. Dr. Scott’s focus in that effort is developing the data governance tools necessary to ensure that the products of advanced analytics truly benefit Veterans.

Dr. Alan Sim is an epidemiologist with extensive experience in population health informatics and translational data science. He currently serves as CDC’s first Chief Data Officer (CDO). Dr. Sim has over twenty years of experience with healthcare data management, analytics, public health informatics, and data science with multiple government, health, and military organizations. Dr. Sim serves as the executive champion of several key enterprise and Data Modernization Initiatives (DMI) activities including the Enterprise Data Catalog (EDC), Enterprise Data Analytics and Visualization (EDAV) platform, and development of a CDC Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy/Framework.Prior to joining the CDC, Dr. Sim served as the chief data scientist with the Enterprise Intelligence and Data Services (EIDS) PMO within the Department of Defense (DoD). He has spearheaded multi-million dollar joint incentive fund (JIF) innovation initiatives focused on opioid safety and suicide prevention. His teams have provided data, analytical, and data science services for a wide variety of operational and research projects related to opioid misuse, polypharmacy, transition of care (DoD to VA), HEDIS, patient satisfaction and access to care, and long-term chronic disease health outcomes associated with combat injuries among others.

Ioana is the Technical Leader for Standards and Interoperability with responsibility for program execution; responsible standards-related consultation, development, and outreach to partners within VHA, VA, as well as across the government and in the national and international healthcare communities. She is responsible for innovative application of Standards related professional engineering practices and operations research functions on highly complex problems plaguing the health care system in both a tactical and strategic manner. Ioana has 30 years of software development, 25 years of HL7 and other health IT standards (IEEE, IHE, ASTM, OMG, NCPDP). She also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering, Master’s in Computer Science, is a HL7 Fellow, the co-chair of multiple HL7 committees; HL7 certified, and has a AI Strategy Certification (AI for Healthcare).

Xavier Soosai is an experienced Senior Executive Service leader with over 25 years of experience in information technology within the federal government and Fortune 50 companies. As the Chief Information Officer of the Center for Information Technology (CIT), Soosai is responsible for the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of all CIT IT systems and their data in accordance with federal IT compliance acts. This includes maximizing value and assessing and managing the risks of information technology at CIT.

As the Director of the Office of Information Technology Services Management at CIT, Soosai oversees ten IT service divisions with $350 million in annual budget and manages a team of 840+ staff in the delivery of scientific research and business operations across the Institutes and Centers at NIH. This includes maintaining the high-performance computing environment for intramural scientists; maintaining NIH’s secure, high-speed network; ensuring the viability and availability of collaboration services; compute hosting and storage services; identity and access management services; service desk support and more for the NIH community.

Soosai has been recognized and awarded for bringing simplification to the IT and business environment, reducing the cost and complexity of infrastructure environment, and improving stability of IT applications to world class quality.
Soosai previously worked at the Department of Treasury’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as the Director of Strategic Planning and Technology Direction and as the Senior Vice President of IT Infrastructure at the Bank of America. Soosai has an MBA from Texas A&M University and an MS in Computer Applications from St. Joseph’s College.

Michael Tartakovsky, MSc, is a recognized expert and pioneer in bioinformatics, cyber and information technologies, renowned for developing innovative strategies at the intersection of life sciences and technology with a distinctive combination of executive and technical expertise. Since 2003, he has served as a Chief Information Officer and Director of the Office of Cyber Infrastructure and Computational Biology (OCICB) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health (USA).

Mr. Tartakovsky leads his organization in delivering state-of-the-art scientific IT infrastructure, custom software, bioinformatics, and business intelligence solutions to the NIAID and NIH staff and their collaborators worldwide. His primary focus is on fostering scientific cooperation by applying modern informatics to facilitate discovery process.

Under Mr. Tartakovsky’s guidance, his teams created numerous unique solutions to enhance research capabilities collaborating with computer and life scientists across the globe. His Office supports multiple domestic and international sites to promote universal scientific participation by providing key technology infrastructures to enable on-site clinical research and scientific data analysis.
Mr. Tartakovsky is a recipient of the 2021 Distinguished Executive and 2015 Meritorious Executive Presidential Rank Awards, and author of numerous prestigious keynote addresses, influential presentations, and instrumental scientific publications on the application of cutting-edge technologies to advance biomedical science.

Imani leads the cybersecurity compliance team at MongoDB. She has over a decade of experience in the public sector and security compliance within the software industry. Her past roles have included providing advisory services to Fortune 500 companies and managing projects on Google’s global public sector cloud compliance team. She holds a B.S. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and currently resides in Washington, DC.

Dr. Renee Wegrzyn serves as the first director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), appointed on October 11, 2022, by President Joseph R. Biden. Previously, Wegrzyn served as a vice president of business development at Ginkgo Bioworks and head of innovation at Concentric by Ginkgo where she focused on applying the tools of synthetic biology to outpace infectious diseases. Wegrzyn comes to ARPA-H with experience working for over a decade at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), five of those years as a program manager with a $250 million portfolio, and as a technical advisor to the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). At DARPA, Wegrzyn leveraged the tools of synthetic biology and gene editing to enhance biosecurity, support the domestic bioeconomy, and thwart biothreats. Wegrzyn received the Superior Public Service Medal for her work and contributions at DARPA.

Before joining DARPA, she led teams in private industry across a range of specialties including biosecurity and gene therapies. Wegrzyn served on the scientific advisory board for the National Academies Standing Committee on Biotechnology Capabilities and National Security Needs, among other boards in government and the private sector. She holds doctoral and bachelor’s degrees in applied biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology, was a fellow in the Center for Health Security Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative and completed her postdoctoral training as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in Heidelberg, Germany.