Meet the Staff

Dr. Susan Gregurick was appointed Associate Director for Data Science and the Director of ODSS in September 2019. Under Dr. Gregurick’s leadership and guided by the NIH’s Strategic Plan for Data Science, ODSS leads and coordinates catalytic data science activities in scientific, technical, and operational programs in collaboration with the NIH institutes, centers, and offices.

Read Dr. Gregurick’s full bio.

Dr. Belinda Seto was appointed deputy director of the ODSS in January 2020. A former deputy director of the National Eye Institute and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, she brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to the position. After earning her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Purdue University, Dr. Seto completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Stadtman Lab of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. She researched hepatitis B and vaccine development at the FDA. She oversaw the analysis and reporting of NIH grants data and trends through the Office of Extramural Research. Her experience in database management, analysis and extramural grants policies led her to serve on the NIH Scientific Data Council and the Scientific Data Policy Council.

Ishwar Chandramouliswaran is a Program Director and technical lead for the strategy, planning, coordination and oversight of establishing a FAIR data ecosystem at ODSS.

Prior to joining ODSS, Ishwar served as the Deputy Director and operationalized NIAID’s newly established office of data science and emerging technologies and successfully developed trans-NIAID program initiatives that focused on data reuse, research software development, and establishing a NIAID Data Ecosystem. Prior to joining NIAID, Ishwar was an Associate Director at the National Cancer Institute’s, Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology and contributed to innovative programs and technology supporting open and collaborative team science to accelerate research in the cancer informatics community including the cancer genomics cloud and NCI hub projects.

His career has spanned scientific research in bioinformatics to product development in academic and commercial settings, and his work driven by both research community needs and emerging technologies. His non-governmental experience includes serving as a subject matter expert at IBM Corporation towards realizing translational science through their clinical genomics engagements with noteworthy projects at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF); and as a bioinformatics scientist at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and Celera Genomics. Ishwar is one of the authors of the landmark Science publications on the sequence of the human genome and holds patents in gene discovery. Ishwar holds an MS in Biochemistry from University of Maryland at College Park and an MBA from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Samson Gebreab joined ODSS in 2022 to lead the NIH’s Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity (AIM-AHEAD) program. In his role, Samson is responsible for the overall management, oversight, coordination, and implementation of the AIM-AHEAD program and for ensuring the benefits of big data and AI/ML technologies reach across diverse populations.

Before joining ODSS, Samson was a Program Director at the NCI Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities (CRCHD), where he led efforts related to Partnerships to Advance Cancer Health Equity between Minority Serving Institutions and NCI-Designated Cancer Centers. Samson also led the NCI Early Investigator Advancement Program (EIAP) and Research Supplements to Promote Diversity, Reentry, and Re-integration in Cancer Research Careers.

Samson received his joint M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Statistics and Spatial Epidemiology from Utah State University. He also received his M.Sc. in Geographic Information Science from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. He completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Dr. Alison Lin joined ODSS in 2022 to lead the Training, Workforce Initiatives and Community Engagement team. In this role, she is responsible for the planning and implementation of strategies to grow a diverse and strong data science workforce that serves all communities. Dr. Lin oversees the management of programs including the DATA National Scholar program and the Coding it Forward Civic Digital Fellow program.

Beginning in 2012, Dr. Lin served as Program Director and later Deputy and Acting Branch Chief at the Diversity Training Branch (DTB) of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI’s) Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities (CRCHD). She has developed and led several significant efforts in promoting the cancer research workforce diversity both extramurally and intramurally, including the NCI Youth Enjoy Science (YES) Research Education Program (R25), the Early Investigator Advancement Program and the intramural training program iCURE. She also led the management of the diversity and re-entry and re-integration supplement programs at NCI. Prior to joining NCI, Dr. Lin served as an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. She conducted interdisciplinary research focused on understanding the molecular interactions of membrane proteins and their signaling mechanisms, particularly those that modulate the cytoskeleton. Dr. Lin received her Ph.D. in physics/biophysics from the University of California, Santa Barbara and her B.S. in physics, summa cum laude, from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Dr. Hsinyi “Steve” Tsang is the lead of the Clinical Informatics team for ODSS. In this role, he promotes the use of clinical standards, such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), in biomedical research by developing and conducting training and education activities. Steve has spent most of the last two decades at the NIH in various capacities. Prior to joining ODSS, he was a program officer at NIAID where he administered and oversaw data science projects in immune-mediated and infectious diseases. For the broader research community, Steve has been promoting data science training as well as the use of emerging technologies including cloud computing, software containerization, and workflow management for reproducible biomedical data science research. He received a B.S. in Biochemistry from University of Maryland College Park and a Ph.D. in biology/structural bioinformatics from the Johns Hopkins University, as part of the NIH Graduate Partnerships Program (GPP).

Rakchya Adhikari joined ODSS in 2022 to support the strategy, planning, and oversight of establishing a FAIR data and repository ecosystem, and to support ODSS in the development and oversight of programs related to data resources at NIH. Prior to joining ODSS, Rakchya worked in the healthcare space for four years, working at an individual patient level, then shifted her career working in public health contributing her efforts to research and analytics at a population level. Prior to joining, she was at the Washington D.C Department of Forensic Science, Public Health Laboratories Division, completing her preceptorship on addressing COVID-19 health disparities within the Washington District. Rakchya received her Master’s in Public Health from George Washington University and her undergraduate degree in Health Administration and Policy from George Mason University.

Nicholas Andrade is a data science training specialist for the Training, Workforce Initiatives & Community Engagement (TWICE) team. He has a background in DNA sequencing/synthesis and genetic health reporting. Prior to joining ODSS, Nicholas spent nine years working for a variety of biotech companies, most recently Invitae, as a clinical systems analyst focused on improving data infrastructure to facilitate internal production activities. He also led an EdX data science bootcamp aimed at helping students and professionals break into the field of data science. Nicholas as a B.S. in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology from UC Santa Barbara.

Dr. Anwar provides oversight of the NIH-wide ODSS efforts in Foundational AI, including Multimodal AI. He is an advisor and information resource on foundational AI initiatives, programs, policies, and procedures to the NIH Councils, Institutes and the scientific community. He also provides Subject Matter Expertise and ODSS representation on NIH-wide AI efforts and/or ICO efforts as needed.

A former NIH Data and Technology Advancement (DATA) National Service Scholar and a former tenured Full Professor of Computer Science, he brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to the position. He is an interdisciplinary computer scientist with training in human-centered artificial intelligence (AI). Dr. Anwar has a diverse set of experiences in processing high-volume medical data of complex structures from disparate sources including raw data (e.g., IoMT, wearables, smartphone sensor data), unstructured data (e.g., prehospital EMS run reports, clinical notes), and implicitly noisy data (e.g., social media). Additionally, he brings insight from his work in privacy and security into preserving privacy and protecting data and models.

Shu (Sue) Hui Chen received her Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics and Cellular and Developmental Physiology in 2009 from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She came to the NIH, specifically the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in 2010 where her postdoctoral work focused on studying molecular and comparative genomics to investigate underlying host-pathogen interactions and factors that contribute to pathogen crossing of the blood-brain barrier.

Sue comes to us from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) a part of the US National Institutes of Health, where she served as the Data Access Committee Chair and Genomics Program Administrator for NHLBI. Her position focused on the Policies and Operations that feed into Data Management and Sharing for the IC including strategizing and applying solutions to enhance responsible data sharing for the IC. She specializes in genomics research programs involving infectious disease, immunology, resilience and how these factors affect heart, lung, blood, and sleep in human health and disease, while ensuring protection of human subjects. Her past experience in Patenting, Licensing, and collaborative agreements included serving on a special projects committee to re-evaluate the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID) technology transfer Human Subjects Research Checklist in order to comply with the NIH Human Subjects research policy and the Common Rule (45 CFR part 46) for sharing and receiving of human samples and associated data. She is NIH IRB certified and serves on trans-NIH committees related to data sharing with regards to human subjects protections. She was also an important contributor to the NHLBI programs such as TOPMed and BioData Catalyst.

Christine Cutillo is a Health Data Scientist for AI Ethics in the Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS), within the Integrated Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies (IIET) unit. She is responsible for multidisciplinary NIH-wide AI Ethics efforts – focusing on integrating ethics through the AI lifecycle in biomedical research applications. She is highly interested in data-driven scientific and health care innovations that are transparent, ethical, and designed for and with the patient/end user.

Prior to joining ODSS, Christine was the Data Science Lead in the Office of the Director at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) for three years. In that capacity, she worked with Offices and Divisions across NCATS to strategically plan and drive successful operations of data science activities at the Center. She joined NCATS in 2012 as a scientific program management analyst in the Division of Preclinical Innovation, working on grant coordination and submissions, education and outreach, and reporting of scientific projects and activities. She became special assistant to the director in late 2012 and worked on collaborative initiatives to advance translational science, particularly data-driven projects in the areas of rare disease and artificial/machine intelligence, international efforts to advance the science and understanding of biomedical translation through global cooperation and collaborative projects, and education-related resources to increase the awareness and understanding of translational science.

Prior to joining NCATS, she worked for four years at the National Human Genome Research Institute, tracking, and evaluating the progress of the Large-Scale Genome Sequencing Centers, in addition to working with extramural teams to manage four other programs. Christine holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and math from Georgetown University, a Master of Management in Clinical Informatics from the Duke University School of Medicine, and a certificate in project management from Georgetown University.

Dr. Andrew Hasley is an analyst on the FAIR Data & Resources team. He works on the strategy, planning, and oversight of establishing a FAIR data and repository ecosystem at NIH. He is particularly interested in the intersection of FAIR and inclusive data practices.

Andrew has spent his career as a biology researcher and educator. He earned a B.A. in biology from Albion College in Albion, MI, and his Ph.D. in genetics from University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he had opportunities to learn approaches ranging from transcriptomics and bioinformatics to image analysis. He stayed at UW–Madison to study bacterial metabolic evolution as a Computation and Informatics for Biology and Medicine postdoctoral fellow.

Andrew is dedicated to making STEM more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. He is a scientist with a visual disability and has advocated for and facilitated implementation of Universal Design for Learning and other inclusive strategies into STEM education and practice. He has been an EDSIN/QUBES Open Education Community Fellow and the Assistant Director for the UDL Initiative at BIOQUEST. Most recently, Andrew was a Postdoctoral Teaching Scholar in the North Carolina State University Biotechnology program, designing and teaching courses on subjects including basic biotechnology skills, bioethics, career development, metagenomics, and environmental DNA. Beyond his professional interests, Andrew is an avid hockey fan, plays the violin, and enjoys birding, biking, and being on the water with his wife.