Staff Bio
Susan Monarez, PhD is the Director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Role at CDC
As director of CDC, Dr. Monarez leads the agency in protecting the public’s health through disease prevention, emergency response, and scientific research, while advising top U.S. officials on health policy.
Previous experience
Dr. Monarez comes to CDC from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), most recently serving as deputy director of ARPA-H since January 2023.
Prior to joining ARPA-H, Dr. Monarez led high-impact initiatives focusing on the ethical use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to support improved health outcomes, novel approaches to addressing affordability and accessibility in healthcare, expanding access to behavioral and mental health interventions, ending the opioid epidemic, addressing health disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality, and improving the country's organ donation and transplantation programs.
Dr. Monarez served at the White House in the Office of Science and Technology Policy and on the National Security Council, leading efforts to enhance the nation's biomedical innovation capabilities, including combating antimicrobial resistance, expanding the use of wearables to promote patient health, ensuring personal health data privacy, and improving pandemic preparedness. She has also held leadership positions at the Department of Homeland Security and has led numerous international cooperative initiatives to promote bilateral and multilateral health innovation research and development.