President Joe Biden has appointed Lenny Weggin, a 45-year-old applied biologist with a background in industry and government, to lead his new agency for biomedical innovation, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-H). I chose him as president.

Congress created ARPA-H in March with a $1 billion starting budget. It aims to bring the kind of innovation to biomedical research supported by the Army’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), known for its development of the Internet and GPS. The Biden administration has set up a new agency within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) despite concerns that APPA-H may struggle to break through her NIH’s conservative funding culture. did.

Bystanders applaud Wegryzn’s choice, now at Gingko Bioworks, a synthetic biology company based in Boston. Brad Ringeisen, deputy director and later director of DARPA’s Office of Biological Technologies from late 2016 to mid-2020, said she was “advertising and building a different and innovative program than the NIH approach.” A very astute scientist,” he said. Wegrzyn served as his program manager under Ringeisen. Her portfolio included funding research to make CRISPR gene editors safer and more accurate. Prior to that, she worked at Booz Allen Hamilton as an advisor to DARPA and intelligence advanced research project activities in areas such as biosecurity and biodefense. She went to a consulting firm a few years after completing her PhD. She holds a PhD in Applied Biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Although she hasn’t been on the bench lately, Wegrzyn “has a tremendous amount of management experience and has worked with some of the best scientists in the world, including CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna,” says Doudna’s Ringeisen, current executive director of the Innovative Genomics Institute, said. (Wegrzyn is a member of the Institute’s Scientific Advisory Board.)

Wegrzyn is “known as a no-nonsense person who does the best for safety and science,” says Gigi Kwik Gronvall of the Center for Health Safety at Johns Hopkins University, where Wegrzyn was a fellow a decade ago. She is adept at explaining science to a general audience, a skill that will serve her as her director of ARPA-H, Gronvall says.

Wegrzyn does not have much experience with illnesses other than clinical medicine or infectious diseases. A key test, according to Ringeisen, is whether you can hire the right experts in those areas. “Can she make that team? We’ll have to wait and see.”

For the biomedical research group that has pushed the creation of ARPA-H, it is a comfort to have a permanent director on board. (The agency is now headed by Acting Deputy Administrator Adam Russell, a social scientist who is also a DARPA alumnus.) Her Ellen Sigal, chair of Friends of Cancer Research, said: She believes Wegrzyn brings “strong leadership” and “a uniquely important skill set” to the job.

Wegzin, who does not require Senate approval for ARPA-H work (unlike some heads of top scientific institutions), said in a statement: It would improve the health of Americans. ”

Demonstrating progress towards its mission, including breakthroughs in diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer and diabetes that are accessible to all patients, will help gain support from a skeptical Congress for a larger ARPA-H budget. is essential to It has also not yet been determined where ARPA-H will be physically located. Senate bills require headquarters to be located outside the Washington, DC area to ensure independence from the NIH.

Lingeisen, who was also a candidate for the managerial job, predicts Wegzin will face “a lot of pressure and no time to deliver”.