Carolina Salvador Morales, Ph.D., is the chief of the Biomedical Technology Branch in the Division of Biophysics, Biomedical Technology, and Computational Biosciences. She oversees biomedical technology-focused grant portfolios and co-leads the Biomedical Technology and Dissemination funding program.
Prior to joining NIGMS, Morales was a program director at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), in the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis, Cancer Imaging Program, and Nanodelivery Systems and Devices Branch, where she managed nanotechnology and imaging-centric grants. She also co-developed several funding initiatives on wearable devices for cancer research and care in collaboration with other NCI divisions, centers, and institutes. She is the recipient of the 2023 NCI Director’s Award of Merit.
Before NIH, Morales was a tenured associate professor. Her research program included cancer nanotechnology, molecular imaging, and agricultural chemistry projects. She received several research grants from NIH, National Science Foundation (NSF), Center for Innovative Technology, and Jeffress Trust Awards Program. She has published multiple peer-reviewed articles in leading colloidal chemistry and nanoscience journals and is the author of book chapters as well. Furthermore, she was a visiting scholar at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Morales’ academic background is not just multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, but also includes training and experience in entrepreneurship. She was a Kauffman Fellow in 2010 and taught courses on entrepreneurship in bioengineering for over 8 years. Her passion for medical translation led her to perform an extensive customer discovery process within the NSF I-Corp program and to co-found Nano-Guided Technologies, LLC.
Morales received her bachelor's degree in physics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and her master's degree in biochemistry from Trinity College, Dublin. Her Ph.D. in chemistry is from Oxford University, and she conducted her postdoctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham and Women's Hospital.
To contact Morales, send email to carolina.salvadormorales@nih.gov.
If you’re a reporter wishing to interview Morales, contact the NIGMS Communications and Public Liaison Branch.
