Team: Re-Engineering the Biomedical Workforce (RRE)

Functional Area: Science Policy

Programs: Community Partnerships to Advance Science for Society (ComPASS)

Dr. Toy Lisa Mitchell joined the Office of Strategic Coordination (OSC) as a Health Scientist and an AAAS fellow in August 2023. Prior to joining OSC, Toy served as a Behavioral Health Consultant for a Federal Qualified Healthcare Clinic, Licensed Professional Counselor and Clinical Supervisor for a Mental Health Agency. Dr. Mitchell’s work experiences also include working with indigenous rural and urban populations pertaining to aspects of health and mental health. She received her Bachelors of Arts in Mass Communication from Western Kentucky University, Masters of Education in Human Development Counseling from Vanderbilt University, and her doctorate in Communication from the University of Kentucky.

Team: Operations Team

Functional Area: Award Management and Tracking

Programs: All Common Fund Programs

Mr. Michael Morse the Operations Team Leader and a grants management advisor to the Director of the Office of Strategic Coordination (OSC). He facilitates the communication of funding decisions from OSC to the grants offices of the administering NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) and provides grants guidance and support to both the OSC and the IC Grants Offices. Mr. Morse earned a bachelor's degree in business management from the University of Maryland. He spent 14 years in the banking industry before joining NIH. In 1990, he went to work for the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) as a grants management specialist. He worked there for over a decade before moving to the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) as the deputy chief for their grants office. He was involved in training for grants specialists and seminars for the Society of Research Administrators. He left the government for a brief period, and returned to grants management work, this time on the NIH Roadmap, now known as the Common Fund.

Team: Operations Team; Strategic Planning, Evaluation, and Communications (SPEC)

Functional Area: Award Management and Tracking; Communication and Outreach; FOA Processing; Program Evaluation and Analysis

Programs: NIH Director's Early Independence Award (EIA); NIH Director's New Innovator Award (NIA); NIH Director's Pioneer Award (PA); NIH Director's Transformative Research Award (TRA); Transformative High Resolution Cryo-Electron Microscopy (CryoEM)

Ms. Ellie Murcia received her bachelor’s degree in business administration from Goshen College. She received a master’s degree in international education from the University of Massachusetts. Ms. Murcia came to the NIH in 2000 as a program analyst in the Office of the Director at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR). She began working with the NIH Roadmap since its inception in 2004 and stayed when it transitioned into the Common Fund with the NIH Reauthorization in 2006. Ms. Murcia is a program specialist and serves as the NIH Guide Liaison for the Common Fund and is part of the Operations Team supporting the four programs of the High-Risk, High-Reward Research initiative and the Transformative High Resolution Cryo-Electron Microscopy program.

Team: Office Management Team

Functional Area: Office Management

Programs: Administrative & Budgetary Management; All Common Fund Programs; All OSC Activities for Travel, Property and Purchases; Management Analysis; Office-wide Engagement; Workforce Planning & Development

Mark Murdock joined the Office of Strategic Coordination (OSC) in March 2023. He serves as a Program Analyst. Prior to joining OSC, he worked for the NIMH as a Management Analyst. He earned his B.S. in Psychology-Counseling and MBA from Washington Adventist University formerly known as Columbia Union College.

Team: Strategic Planning, Evaluation, and Communications (SPEC)

Functional Area: Communication and Outreach; Program Evaluation and Analysis; Program Strategic Planning; Website Content

Programs: Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa); Human Virome Program; Somatic Cell Genome Editing (SCGE); Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN)

Ms. Sonynka Ngosso serves as a Scientific Program manager for Common Fund programs related to bionformatics and big data, somatic cell genome editing, social and behavioral sciences, undiagnosed diseases, and data science applications in Africa. She joined the Office of Strategic Coordination (OSC) in 2017 as a scientific program analyst for the Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) program. Prior to joining the OSC, she served as a scientific program analyst for BD2K in the Office of the Associate Director for Data Science. She obtained her B.S. and M.S. in biology from Towson University, where she studied the visual orientation of gypsy moth larvae to emissive colors to provide a basis for the development of safer biocontrol measures, such as light traps, to control the destructive effects of this pest on crops and vegetation. Ms. Ngosso also holds a M.B.A. in health care management from the University of Baltimore Merrick School of Business.

Team: Transformational Science and Discovery (TSD)

Functional Area: Program Management

Programs: Gabriella Miller Kids First (Kids First); Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa); Medical Education Partnership Initiative (FIC program); Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity in Humans (MoTrPAC); Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN)

Dr. Concepcion (Marie) Nierras joined the Office of Strategic Coordination (OSC) from JDRF International (previously Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation), where she was in charge of international partnerships. She served as program officer for JDRF’s portfolio in genetics, including genetics of susceptibility to type 1 diabetes, and genetics of diabetic nephropathy. As part of the program team representing funders of the International Type 1 Diabetes Genetics Consortium, Dr. Nierras had extensive interactions with colleagues at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Dr. Nierras received her Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and did postdoctoral research at Oxford University and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Team: Division of Other Transactions Management (DOTM)

Functional Area: Other Transactions

Programs: Community Partnerships to Advance Science for Society (ComPASS)

Ms. Elfreda Nymn joined the Office of Strategic Coordination (OSC) joined the Office of Strategic Coordination (OSC)-Division of Other Transactions Management (DOTM) as an Other Transactions Agreements Specialist in July 2023. Prior to joining OSC, Ms. Nymn held grants management positions at DOD/USAMRAA, DOC/NIST, & HHS/ACF. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Geography from the University of the Maryland.

Team: Re-Engineering the Biomedical Workforce (RRE)

Functional Area: Program Management

Programs: Community Partnerships to Advance Science for Society (ComPASS); Transformative Research to Address Health Disparities and Advance Health Equity

Dr. Margaret Ochocinska joined the Office of Strategic Coordination in November of 2022 as Program Leader with the Re-engineering the Research Enterprise. Previously, she served as Program Director in the Translational Blood Science and Resources Branch in the Division of Blood Diseases and Resources at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), where she launched the Trans-Agency Blood-Brain Interface Program, a partnership between NHLBI and the Department of Defense Joint Program Committee-6 (JPC-6) Combat Casualty Care Research Program (CCCRP), to support collaborations between hematologists/vascular experts, neuroscientists, and blood-brain barrier (BBB) tissue chip developers for high risk/high reward research to create enhanced/modified platforms that more closely model the human BBB. Prior to joining NHLBI, Dr. Ochocinska was a Health Program Specialist in the Office of Translational Research, at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), supporting both the Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats (CounterACT) Program and the Anticonvulsant Screening Program (ASP). Dr. Ochocinska received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), where she worked on identifying mediators of photoreceptor degeneration.

Team: Catalytic Data Resources (CDR)

Functional Area: Program Management

Programs: Gabriella Miller Kids First (Kids First); Metabolomics; Common Fund Data Ecosystem(CFDE)

Dr. Papanicolaou joined the Office of Strategic Coordination in 2021, where he helps integrate data from multiple Common Fund programs with the Common Fund Data Ecosystem (CFDE). Previously, Dr. Papanicolaou worked as a Research Geneticist in the Epidemiology Branch in the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences in the National Heart, Lung, Blood Institute (NHLBI). While a Program Director at NHLBI, he led efforts in genomics and omics in diverse programs such as Candidate Gene Resource (CARe), SHARe (SNP Health Association Resource), Omics in Latinos (OLa), Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed), and TOPMed’s Centralized Omics Resource (CORE). He was also the Program Officer for the Framingham Heart Study. George also drafted standards and pipelines adopted by TOPMed for its omics resources. In addition, he served on the Steering Committee of Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE). George received his Ph.D. in Human Genetics from the University of Michigan, studying and mapping tumor suppressor effects of regions of chromosome 6 on melanoma in Dr. Jeffrey Trent’s Laboratory of Cancer Genetics at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). He then completed a postdoc and fellowship in statistical genetics in Dr. Alec F. Wilson’s group at the Inherited Disease Research Branch at NHGRI. He also lectured and served as a discussant at Johns Hopkins University.

Team: Office Management Team

Functional Area: Office Management

Programs: Workforce Planning & Development

Lola Peterson joined the Office of Strategic Coordination as a Business Process Specialist in December 2023. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Network and Security, which she earned from the University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) in College Park, Maryland. Lola brings a wealth of expertise from her roles in professional government and private sector programs. She has consistently excelled in supporting and managing database, production, and web development initiatives.

Team: Division of Other Transactions Management (DOTM)

Functional Area: Other Transactions

Programs: Bridge to Artificial Intelligence (Bridge2AI); Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions (SPARC)

Erna Petrich joined the Division of Other Transactions Management (DOTM) within the Office of Strategic Coordination (OSC) as an Other Transactions Agreements Officer in September 2022. Prior to joining DOTM, Erna worked as an Agreements Officer and Grants Management Specialist at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and as a Contracting Officer at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Prior to joining NIH, Erna worked in a variety positions and locations within the Department of Defense. Erna holds a master’s degree in the International Administration from the University of Denver.