Tara Schwetz
Acting Principal Deputy Director, National Institutes of Health
Tara A. Schwetz, Ph.D., is the Acting Principal Deputy Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), effective December 20, 2021. Prior to that, Dr. Schwetz was on detail to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as the Assistant Director for Biomedical Science Initiatives, where she led the efforts to stand up the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to drive medical innovation more rapidly. Since 2019, Dr. Schwetz has served as the Associate Deputy Director of NIH and the Alternate Deputy Ethics Counselor for NIH. Throughout her more than 10-year tenure at NIH, Dr. Schwetz has held multiple positions across several Institutes and within the Office of the Director, including as the Acting Director of the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR). Dr. Schwetz started her career at NIH as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow. Dr. Schwetz has led or co-led a number of high-profile, NIH-wide efforts, including two Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics programs (RADx Underserved Populations and RADx Radical), and has spearheaded several strategic planning efforts, such as the first NIH-Wide Strategic Plan and the NIH-Wide COVID-19 Strategic Plan. She received a B.S. in biochemistry with honors from Florida State University and a Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of South Florida, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University.
