Christopher Austin's Biography

Christopher Austin, Director, National Institutes of Health

Christopher Austin is Director of the Division of Preclinical Innovation (DPI) at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), U.S. National Institutes of Health. DPI’s mission is to both translate basic science discoveries into new treatments, particularly for rare and neglected diseases, and to develop new technologies and paradigms to improve the efficiency of therapeutic and diagnostic development. DPI’s programs span the spectrum of translational science from RNAi biology to first-in-human clinical trials, including the NIH Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC), the Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND) program, the Bridging Interventional Development Gaps (BrIDGs, formerly NIH-RAID) program, and the Toxicology in the 21st Century (Tox21) program. Before joining NIH in 2002, Dr. Austin directed research programs genomics-based target discovery, pharmacogenomics, and neuropsychiatric drug development at Merck, with a particular focus on schizophrenia. Dr. Austin received his A.B. in biology from Princeton and M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He completed clinical training in internal medicine and neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and a fellowship in genetics at Harvard.