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Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Statement on the Departure of Dr. Nina Schor

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I write to share with you the news that Nina Schor, M.D., Ph.D., NIH’s Deputy Director for Intramural Research (DDIR), will be departing from federal service on September 30, 2025. Dr. Schor has served in this role since August 2022, overseeing a massive and complex enterprise of government scientists, program directors, and policy experts as they work to improve the health of the American public. During her tenure, many NIH-wide projects and policies have contributed to advancement towards that important goal.

As DDIR, Dr. Schor leads the NIH Office of Intramural Research (OIR) overseeing faculty recruitment and development, research regulatory affairs, technology transfer, training and education, and research integrity for the NIH Intramural Research Program (IRP), as well as the NIH Stetten Museum.  Under Dr. Schor’s leadership, OIR has created and piloted ChIRP, an AI-powered chatbot that gives NIH staff and scientists secure access to the latest large language models (LLMs), as well as launched initiatives to improve data sharing within NIH and enable the creation of custom AI tools for our staff. Furthermore, Dr. Schor has led OIR programs that facilitate NIH-funded collaborations between research groups at NIH and teams of scientists around the country, and she has helped guide NIH toward validation of alternatives to animal models in biomedical research. All these accomplishments have come as she has deftly led OIR’s oversight and support of the thousands of scientific and clinical studies conducted at NIH and its investments in training the next generation of scientists to ensure the United States remains at the forefront of biomedical innovation and discovery.

Dr. Schor began her time at NIH in January 2018 as the Deputy Director of NIH’s Â鶹Éç Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke where she guided the institute’s strategic planning activities, career development programs, maternal and child neurologic health collaborations with other NIH institutes and centers and the creation and implementation of the Ultra-Rare GENe-based Therapies (URGenT) Network. She came to NIH after 12 years at the University of Rochester, where she served as the William H. Eilinger Chair of the Department of Pediatrics and Pediatrician-in-Chief of the University’s Golisano Children’s Hospital. She also spent 20 years on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, where she was named the Carol Ann Craumer Professor of Pediatric Research. Both her scientific accomplishments and the mentorship she has provided to dozens of scientists throughout her career have earned her numerous accolades, including the Society for Neuroscience’s 2024 Bernice Grafstein Award for Outstanding Mentoring, along with election to the Â鶹Éç Academy of Medicine and selection as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Upon her departure from NIH, Dr. Schor will return to academia, where she spent 32 years studying and developing therapies for neuroblastoma, a deadly tumor and the most common solid cancer of childhood.

OIR Principal Deputy Director Dr. Roland Owens will serve as Acting DDIR. Please join me in thanking Dr. Schor for her incredible contributions to the NIH mission.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
NIH Director

About the Â鶹Éç (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

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