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O’Hara named Co-Chair of
NIH CTSA Program Steering Committee

STEERING COMMITTEE TO DIRECT AND FACILITATE THE BEST TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH ACROSS ALL CTSA SITES

MARCH 2024

Dr. Ruth O'HaraDr. Ruth O'Hara

Dr. Ruth O’Hara, Senior Associate Dean for Research at the Stanford University School of Medicine, has been appointed by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) to serve as co-chair of the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program Steering Committee. In this role, Dr. O’Hara will work alongside fellow co-chair, Michael Kurilla, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Division of Clinical Innovation at NCATS, providing leadership and guidance to the CTSA network.

More than 60 academic institutions nationally are the recipient of a CTSA award, forming the program’s CTSA network, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, NYU, UCLA, UCSD, and UCSF, to name a few. The goal of the steering committee is to direct and facilitate the best translational research and science of translation across all CTSA sites, so treatments are developed more rapidly and deployed quickly to increased numbers of diverse patient populations across the nation.

In response to the appointment, Dr. O’Hara stated, “It is an honor to serve as co-chair of the Steering Committee. I look forward to supporting the network of CTSAs across the nation to facilitate the translation of innovative, scientific discoveries into treatments that improve patients’ lives—globally, nationally, and in the communities where we reside.”

"It is an honor to serve as co-chair of the Steering Committee. I look forward to supporting the network of CTSAs across the nation to facilitate the translation of innovative, scientific discoveries into treatments that improve patients’ lives—globally, nationally, and in the communities where we reside.”
                                             - Ruth O'Hara, PhD

Dr. O’Hara is the Senior Associate Dean for Research in the Stanford School of Medicine, Director and Principal Investigator of Stanford’s CTSA, and the Lowell W. and Josephine Q. Berry Professor in the Stanford Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. She directs a broad interdisciplinary clinical research program, encompassing cellular models, physiological predictors, and brain and behavioral assays of psychiatric, medical, and cognitive disorders. Dr. O’Hara’s body of research has played a key role in shifting the paradigm to defining, assessing, and targeting psychiatric disorders more fully based on cognitive information processing deficits and underlying neurocircuitry. Dr. O’Hara has been the recipient of numerous NIH and foundation grants in support of her work.  In 2023, she was ranked sixth-highest in terms of National Institutes of Health funding obtained, among psychiatry investigators nationwide.

In her role as Senior Associate Dean for Research, Dr. O’Hara helps oversee School of Medicine research units and services, including research compliance and more than 20 scientific service centers, with a focus on developing a diverse and inclusive culture where investigators and staff at all levels and from all backgrounds feel welcome and respected.

A long proponent for career development education and mentorship in clinical research, Dr. O’Hara has also served as the national director of the 28-site, VA Advanced Fellowship Program in Mental Health Research and Treatment, which has graduated over 500 MD and PhD scholars—with more than 70 percent entering independent clinical research careers in academic medicine. This program is the largest of its kind, with sites at Stanford, Yale, Duke, Mount Sinai, UC San Francisco, UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego, Baylor University, University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Pennsylvania. As the Director and Principal Investigator of the Stanford CTSA program, Dr. O’Hara has extended the reach of Stanford's translational research enterprise through partnerships (Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, the University of the Pacific (UoP) and the University of Hawaii) that include diverse individuals and communities in translational science, research, and training.