UMass Medical School vice provost a candidate to lead FDA

Photo | Courtesy | UMass Medical School Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga

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By Grant Welker

Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga, a vice provost at UMass Medical School and the director of its Center for Clinical and Translational Science, is a candidate to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Luzuriaga, who is Filipino-American, is among three women of color to make an expanded list of FDA candidates, according to The Wall Street Journal. Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock may not be name to the post permanently, the Journal reported.

Luzuriaga declined to comment to the Worcester Business Journal about the report on her candidacy. The Wall Street Journal reported that she was recommended to the Biden administration by a longtime senior FDA official and adviser to the administration.

Luzuriaga is an internationally renowned physician and scientist who investigates ways to improve human health, according to her faculty profile. She joined the Worcester school's faculty in 1990 and has served in a number of leadership roles, including division chief of pediatrics infectious diseases and the founding director of the medical school's Office of Global Health. She's been the director of the school's clinical and translational science center since 2012, and her lab focuses on understanding how viruses, including HIV, establish persistent infections in children.

Much of Luzuriaga's education and career has taken place in Massachusetts.

Luzuriaga has bachelor's and master's degrees in biochemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine. She then served a residency in pediatrics at the Floating Hospital for Children in Boston and completed her clinical and research fellowship in adult and pediatric infectious diseases at UMass Medical School.

In 2013, Luzuriaga was named by Time magazine one of the 100 most influential people in the world, along with two colleagues, Hannah Gay and Deborah Persaud, for functionally curing a newborn of AIDS.

If chosen for the position, Luzuriaga would be the second Massachusetts medical leader to ascend to a top federal position under President Joe Biden.

Dr. Rochelle Wallensky, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was most recently the chief of the division of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is also the federal labor secretary. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert for the government as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is a College of the Holy Cross graduate.