Dr. Mercedes Rubio. Credit: NIGMS.
I’m pleased to announce that Mercedes Rubio has been selected as the new director of our Division for Research Capacity Building. Mercedes is a medical sociologist by training and is currently chief of the Predoctoral Basic Biomedical and Medical Scientist Training Programs Branch in our Division of Training and Workforce Development. She also manages research training, scientific conference, and research on intervention grants and has been the program director for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Diversity Program Consortium’s National Research Mentoring Network.
Prior to becoming a branch chief at NIGMS in 2022, Mercedes was chief of the Education and Training Section in the Division of Clinical Innovations at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, where she managed Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) grants and oversaw CTSA consortium-wide clinical and translational science workforce efforts. Before that, she managed grant portfolios at NIGMS and the National Institute of Mental Health, supporting research education, career development, and training programs.
Rubio has contributed her expertise on several NIH-wide efforts, including the Advisory Committee to the Director’s Working Group on the Physician-Scientist Workforce, the Training Advisory Committee, and the UNITE-E Committee Implementation Team.
Her vast experience in managing a range of research training and capacity building programs, coupled with her strong commitment to broadening participation in biomedical research, make her an ideal selection for this position within our senior leadership team.
For more about Mercedes, refer to our news announcement. Please join me in congratulating her on this new role.
Congratulations Dr. Rubio!