The National Institutes of Health (NIH) named Maureen Falvella as its permanent chief information officer (CIO) and director of the Office of the CIO, effective July 26.
Falvella had led NIH’s technology organization in an acting capacity since September 2025 following the departure of former CIO Adele Merritt in August 2025.
Her permanent appointment puts a longtime NIH technology and cybersecurity leader in charge of the agency’s $1.9 billion IT portfolio, which supports all 27 NIH institutes and centers.
“I’m honored to share that I’ve been selected to serve as NIH’s permanent Chief Information Officer and Director of the Office of the Chief Information Officer, effective July 26, 2026,” Falvella announced on LinkedIn.
Falvella has spent more than 15 years at NIH in a series of technology and cybersecurity leadership roles, including deputy chief information security officer. During that time, she worked on initiatives including RECOVER, BioData Catalyst, and NIH’s first extramural research risk management framework. She also chaired the task force that established security standards now used across NIH’s controlled-access data repositories.
Looking ahead, Falvella said she plans to strengthen collaboration across NIH’s decentralized IT environment while expanding the use of open-source technologies.
“I want to bring more unity to how NIH’s 27 Institutes and Centers are supported by IT, and to open-source more of what we build – compliance-as-code, design patterns, metadata schemas – so the broader biomedical research ecosystem can build on it too,” Falvella said.
Falvella also said she will help lead technology efforts supporting NIH’s Bio Genesis Mission and the agency’s Real-World Data Platform initiative.
The Bio Genesis Mission is NIH’s contribution to the broader federal Genesis Mission, a White House initiative that seeks to use artificial intelligence and advanced computing to accelerate scientific discovery across government. The Bio Genesis Mission is a long-term modernization effort for biomedical research.
The Real-World Data Platform is part of NIH’s broader unified research strategy and focuses on developing national-scale data infrastructure to support biomedical research through the integration and use of real-world health data.