Christopher T. Hanson
NIAID Acting Deputy Director, Science Management
Christopher T. Hanson serves as the Acting NIAID Deputy Director for Science Management. In this position, Mr. Hanson provides leadership for scientific, policy, business, and administrative management of the Institute. As the Executive Officer of NIAID, he conducts senior-level interactions with the extramural community, other National Institutes of Health (NIH) components, and the NIH Office of the Director.
Mr. Hanson was previously Associate Director for Scientific & Business Operations in the Division of Intramural Research (DIR) at NIAID. He helped lead and administer the DIR basic, translational, and clinical research portfolio headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, with additional research centers located in Rockville and Frederick, Maryland, along with Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana. DIR domestic research and development efforts extended outward to Africa and Asia through International Centers for Excellence in Research to enhance and better protect American public health interests.
Chris was a longtime Chair of the NIH Occupational Safety and Health Committee and remains passionate about enabling scientific discovery with special attention on safety, productivity, and speed of relevancy. He is a mission-driven scientific administrator with demonstrated leadership in scientific program management, strategic business operations, infectious disease research, vaccine development, high containment research policy implementation, laboratory space design, and risk management of specialized facilities. Since joining NIAID in 2000, he has received numerous NIAID and NIH Director’s Awards for excellence in his official duties, effective crisis management, and successful implementation of new programs and innovations.
His scientific career began at Celera Genomics advancing the human genome project, expanded at NIAID to include vaccine development for Dengue virus and studies on other high containment pathogens, and shifted subsequently into scientific program management and administration. He holds a B.S. from George Washington University, leadership certificates from the NIH, and is coauthor on 21 scientific publications.