Mary Frances Cotch, Ph.D., is the Associate Director for Vision Health and Population Sciences of the National Eye Institute (NEI).
Dr. Cotch joined the NEI in 1997 as a program director in the NEI Division of Extramural Research. In 2001, she led the epidemiology branch within the NEI Division of Epidemiology and Clinical Applications where her research encompassed various systemic diseases and conditions, from both population and individual perspectives, identifying risk factor patterns, health states, and functional abilities associated with vision loss and eye disease. She served as NEI Acting Deputy Director from September 2019 to November 2020 after which she was named to her current position. Mary Frances intends to focus on issues to improve the vision health of the American public with special emphasis on considering the impact of social determinants to promote equity and accessibility.
Dr. Cotch has served on numerous trans-NIH committees and on the editorial boards of several journals. She earned a B.A. in mathematics at the State University of New York at Albany and a Ph.D. in epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.