Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, PhD, is the Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), one of the 27 Institutes and Centers of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NLM, the center for biomedical and health data science research, is the world’s largest biomedical library and the producer of digital information services used by scientists, health professionals and members of the public worldwide.

Since assuming the directorship in August 2016, Dr. Brennan has positioned the Library to be the hub of data science at NIH and a national and international leader in the field. She spearheaded the development of a new strategic plan that envisions NLM a platform for biomedical discovery and data-powered health.  Leveraging NLM’s heavily used data and information resources, intramural research, and extramural research and training programs, Brennan aims for NLM to accelerate data driven discovery and health, engage with new users in new ways, and develop the workforce for a data-driven future.

Her professional accomplishments reflect her background, which unites engineering, information technology, and clinical care to improve the public health and ensure the best possible experience in patient care.

Dr. Brennan came to NIH from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was the Lillian L. Moehlman Bascom Professor at the School of Nursing and College of Engineering. She also led the Living Environments Laboratory at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, which develops new ways for effective visualization of high dimensional data.

She received a master of science in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Following seven years of clinical practice in critical care nursing and psychiatric nursing, Dr. Brennan held several academic positions at Marquette University, Milwaukee; Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland; and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A past president of the American Medical Informatics Association, Dr. Brennan was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (now the National Academy of Medicine) in 2001. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, the American College of Medical Informatics, and the New York Academy of Medicine.

In 2020, Dr. Brennan was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).  The AIMBE College of Fellows is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to a medical and biological engineer.

Tara A. Schwetz, Ph.D. is the Associate Deputy Director, National Institutes of Health (NIH). Prior to assuming this role, Dr. Schwetz was the Chief of the Strategic Planning and Evaluation Branch in the Office of the Director at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). During her tenure at NIAID, she led several efforts, including conducting an evaluation of the Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance to facilitate evidence-based decision-making and developing the NIAID Strategic Plan for Tuberculosis Research.

Previously, Dr. Schwetz served as the Senior Advisor to the Principal Deputy Director of NIH, where she coordinated efforts such as Reimagine HHS, the NIH rigor and reproducibility activities, and the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan. Dr. Schwetz also served in the dual role of the NIH Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes Interim Associate Program Director and the Special Assistant to the DEPD. Prior to these roles, she was a Health Science Policy Analyst at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, where she helped develop the National Pain Strategy. 

Dr. Schwetz started her career at NIH as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Institute of Nursing Research. She received a BS in biochemistry with honors from Florida State University and a PhD in biophysics from the University of South Florida, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Schwetz has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and NIH.

Dr. Mikel Rodriguez is the director of The Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy Innovation Center at MITRE labs. Being part of a not-for-profit in the public interest Dr. Rodriguez works with a team that can look beyond the bottom line of any particular product or organization and focus harnessing AI to help address national and global challenges. For the past twenty years his research has focused on exploring how artificial intelligence and in particular Computer Vision can be used to help solve problems for a safer world. He obtained his PhD at UCF’s Center for Research in Computer Vision. He was a visiting researcher at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon and a post-doctoral fellow at INRIA at the Département d’Informatique of Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, France. Dr. Rodriguez was the chair of the ODNI Video Analytics Research Working Group and is a senior technical advisor for the Pentagon’s Project MAVEN. He has served in the program committee for IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision, and IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.