The White House is planning to nominate Monica Bertagnolli, MD, as director of the National Institutes of Health, ending a lengthy vacancy at the federal agency. Dr. Bertagnolli was appointed in October 2022 as director of the National Cancer Institute, the first woman to occupy the position.
Dr. Bertagnolli joined NCI from Harvard Medical School, where she served as the Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery in the field of surgical oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She was also a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a member of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Treatment and Sarcoma Centers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
Dr. Bertagnolli would be the second woman to head the NIH. Dr. Bernadine Healy was director of the Research Institute at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation when President George H. W. Bush tapped her in 1991 to become director of the NIH, its first woman head.