National Institute of
General Medical Sciences

National Institute of General Medical Sciences Acting Director Judith H. Greenberg, Ph.D., has selected Susan K. Gregurick, Ph.D., to direct the Institute’s  Division of Biomedical Technology, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology (BBCB). Gregurick is a leader in computational biology who has held positions in both government and academia.

NIGMS is a part of the National Institutes of Health that supports basic research to increase understanding of life processes and lay the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention. With a budget of more than $230 million, the Institute’s BBCB division funds research and training that join biology with the computer sciences, engineering, mathematics and physics. Its activities include supporting research centers in biomedical technology and systems biology as well as computational models of the spread of infectious diseases and the potential effects of interventions. The division also leads the NIH Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative and collaborates with the National Science Foundation to support programs in mathematical biology.

“The division’s activities are critical to many areas of science, especially now that we are on the verge of extracting new knowledge from massive biological data sets," said Greenberg. “Dr. Gregurick’s vision and willingness to take on challenges, her expertise in computational biology and biotechnology, and her success in developing effective programs and policies to support these fields make her an ideal choice.”

From 2011-2012, Gregurick was acting director of the Biological Systems Science Division at the Department of Energy (DOE). She developed and managed DOE’s Systems Biology Knowledgebase, which enables the integration of diverse data sets for modeling, simulation and experimental studies. Starting in 2007, Gregurick’s other DOE activities included developing programs in modeling microbial function, metagenomic analysis from high-throughput sequencing and plant bioinformatics methods. She also oversaw bioinformatics and high-performance computing efforts at the DOE’s Joint Genome Institute and Bioenergy Research Centers.

Earlier in her career, Gregurick was a professor of computational biology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

“I look forward to leading this cutting-edge division; working with my colleagues in NIGMS and across NIH; and amplifying the impact of our science at many levels, from NIH to the federal government and the scientific community,” said Gregurick.

Gregurick earned a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Maryland, College Park. She was a Lady Davis postdoctoral fellow at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an Alfred P. Sloan/DOE fellow in computational biology at the University of Maryland. She has 41 peer-reviewed publications and has given more than 55 invited lectures on her research and programmatic activities.