White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Leader Visits NIH

NIH welcomed Dr. Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), to the Bethesda campus on Aug. 3. During her first visit to NIH, she met with institute and center leaders and received a tour of the Clinical Center (CC).

An engineer and applied physicist, Prabhakar served as director of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, from 2012 to 2017.

In her first gathering at NIH, she discussed improving patient outcomes with several NIH leaders, including Dr. Lawrence Tabak, acting NIH director; Dr. Tara Schwetz, acting NIH principal deputy director; Dr. Diana Bianchi, director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; Dr. Joshua Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH); and Dr. Eliseo Pérez-Stable, director of the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities. 

Prabhakar later joined CC CEO Dr. James Gilman, who guided the group to their first lab visit with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Dr. John Tisdale, NHLBI senior investigator and director of the Cellular and Molecular Therapies Laboratory, shared strategies his team is working on to cure sickle cell disease.

The group also sat down with NIMH distinguished investigator, Dr. Carlos Zarate, chief of the section on the neurobiology and treatment of mood disorders, and chief of the Experimental Therapeutics and Pathophysiology Branch, to discuss how NIMH is developing novel medications for treatment-resistant depression and suicide. 

To round out the visits with each lab, Prabhakar met with patients receiving treatment for sickle cell disease and treatment-resistant depression to learn more about the hands-on clinical research NIH is conducting every day.