Foreign Influence

Opening Remarks:

Melur Ramasubramanian, Ph.D., VP for Research at UVA

Melur K. “Ram” Ramasubramanian is the Vice President for Research at the University of Virginia. Prior to his appointment at UVA, he was the program director for the Engineering Research Centers program at the National Science Foundation and the D.W. Reynolds Distinguished Professor and department chair of Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University, with a joint faculty appointment as professor of bioengineering.

Speakers:

Michael Lauer, M.D., Deputy Director for Extramural Research, NIH

Michael Lauer, M.D., is the Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he serves as the principal scientific leader and advisor to the Director of the NIH on all matters relating to the substance, quality, and effectiveness of the NIH extramural research program and administration. He received education and training at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Albany Medical College, Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, and the NHLBI’s Framingham Heart Study. He spent 14 years at Cleveland Clinic as Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics. From 2007 to 2015 he served as a Division Director at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), where he promoted efforts to leverage big data infrastructure to enable high-efficiency population and clinical research and efforts to adopt a research funding culture that reflected data-driven policy. 

Rebecca Spyke Keiser, Ph.D., Chief of Research Security Strategy and Policy, Head, Office of International Science & Engineering, NSF

Dr. Rebecca Spyke Keiser is head of the Office of International Science & Engineering (OISE) and the Chief of Research Security Strategy and Policy (CORSSP) at the National Science Foundation (NSF).  

Keiser has served as head of OISE since coming to NSF in 2015. The office promotes an integrated, international strategy and manages internally focused programs that are innovative, catalytic and responsive to a broad range of NSF and national interests.

Keiser is the first CORSSP, a position established in March 2020 to ensure the security of federally funded research while maintaining open international collaboration. In this role, Keiser provides the NSF director with policy advice on all aspects of research security strategy. She also leads NSF’s efforts to develop and implement efforts to improve research security and the agency’s coordination with other federal agencies and the White House.

Prior to NSF, she was a special advisor to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) administrator and an executive-in-residence at American University. She held several positions with NASA, including associate deputy administrator for strategy and policy, associate deputy administrator for policy integration, and executive officer to the deputy administrator.

Keiser also served as assistant to the director for international relations at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where she provided policy guidance to the president's science advisor. Her experience covers science and technology policy, agreements and other cooperative efforts. She is a board member of Women in Aerospace and a member of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. She has a bachelor's degree in Japanese studies from Wellesley College; a master's degree in politics of the world economy from the London School of Economics; and a doctorate in international studies from the University of South Carolina. She speaks Japanese and Spanish. 

Scientific Integrity Workshop Series Sponsors:

Note:  iTHRIV is funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Science of the National Institutes of Health Awards UL1TR003015/ KL2TR003016.  Content of the presentations in this series is the responsibility of the presenters and does not necessarily reflect the views of the institution and/or the National Institutes of Health.