Selection of Dr. Michael Lauer as the Deputy Director for Extramural Research, NIH

Dear Colleagues,

I am extremely pleased to announce the selection of Michael S. Lauer, M.D., as the new Deputy Director for Extramural Research. I have worked closely over the years with Mike on a number of issues related to the NIH and the broader biomedical research community and we are delighted to have him join the NIH leadership team. He brings both research expertise and administrative skills to the job, as well as keen insights into world of extramural research. He is expected to begin in this new position within the coming weeks.

Dr. Lauer received his M.D. from Albany Medical College in 1985, interned in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, served his residency in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and was a Clinical Fellow in Medicine (Cardiology), Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He also served as a Research Fellow in the Framingham Heart Study at Boston University Medical School in Framingham, Massachusetts. He spent from 1993-2007 in many leadership roles at the Cleveland Clinic, including serving as a Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics at the Clinic’s Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. He is a board-certified cardiologist, an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, and an elected fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association.

He started at the NIH in 2007 as the Director of the Division of Prevention and Population Science at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and from 2009 to the present he has served as the Director of the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the NHLBI. In 2012, Dr. Lauer received the Arthur S. Flemming Award for exceptional service in Federal Government. He has been an active member of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute since its inception in 2011 and serves on its Methodology Committee, Scientific Publications Working Group, Program Evaluation Group, and Scientific Oversight Committee. He was most recently named the NIH Co-Chair for the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative. His research interests have focused particularly on clinical cardiovascular epidemiology, comparative effectiveness, and biostatistics. Dr. Lauer has also been actively involved and a strong advocate of human subjects protection. Besides these interests, he has longstanding interests in medical editing – for seven years he was a contributing editor for the Journal of the American Medical Association.

His demonstrated leadership, scientific acumen, and commitment to health research make him an excellent choice for the position of the Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the NIH. I am delighted to have him bring both his research expertise and his administrative skills to the Office of Extramural Research and the NIH.

Please join me in welcoming Mike to the NIH leadership team and offering him your full support.

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, National Institutes of Health