David
G
Strauss
M.D., Ph.D.
Leadership Role
Acting
Chief Scientist - Office of the Chief Scientist
David G. Strauss, M.D., Ph.D., is the FDA’s Acting Chief Scientist. The Chief Scientist promotes, leverages, and leads cross-cutting, collaborative activities and initiatives that catalyze FDA science, innovation, and research to help the agency address its most pressing regulatory and public health questions and respond to emerging issues. The Office of the Chief Scientist supports the research foundation, science, and innovation that underpins the FDA’s regulatory mission. It does this through a broad framework that encompasses scientific collaborations, laboratory safety, the transfer of FDA inventions to the private sector, scientific integrity in FDA policy and decision-making, the professional development of regulatory scientists, and conducting applied research at the FDA, including in its National Center for Toxicological Research.
Prior to serving as Acting Chief Scientist, Dr. Strauss was Director of the Division of Applied Regulatory Science in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). In that role, Dr. Strauss led efforts to move new science into the FDA regulatory process and address emergent regulatory and public health questions by engaging stakeholders in mission-critical laboratory, computational, and clinical research. This wide-ranging work brought him in contact with many of the complex and varied scientific and regulatory issues the agency faces. He spent five years in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH); eight years in CDER, and worked with all of the regulatory product centers, the National Center for Toxicological Research, the Office of Regulatory Affairs, and the Office of the Commissioner on a variety of applied research projects and cross-agency committees.
Dr. Strauss joined the FDA in 2010 in CDRH’s Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories and Office of Device Evaluation after having served as a research fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He subsequently became a Medical Officer in CDRH. In 2015, he became a Senior Advisor for Translational and Experimental Medicine in CDER in the Office of Clinical Pharmacology, Office of Translational Sciences before moving to his position leading CDER’s Division of Applied Regulatory Science in 2016.
David has published many articles and peer-review papers and has received numerous awards for his work, including CDER’s Dr. Frances O. Kelsey Drug Safety Excellence Award, the Leon I. Goldberg Early Investigator Award from the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and the 2015 HHS Secretary’s Award for Meritorious Service.
He holds a bachelor’s in chemistry from Duke University with a certificate in health policy, a doctor of medicine from the Duke University School of Medicine, and a doctor of philosophy in clinical physiology from Lund University in Sweden.