Kathleen Anderson, Ph.D., directs the NEI Division of Extramural Activities, which oversees research administration policies, peer review, and grants management functions. She also serves as the acting director of the NEI Division of Extramural Science Programs, which oversees NEI grant funding at campuses and research organizations across the U.S., and Executive Secretary for the National Advisory Eye Council.
Dr. Anderson first joined NIH in 2001 as the Chief of the Cognitive Neuroscience Program in the Division of Neuroscience and Basic Behavioral Research at NIMH. In 2008, she became the Deputy Director of the Division of Developmental Translational Research and in 2014, the Deputy Director of the Division of Translational Research at NIMH. In these roles, she supported research and training programs focused on translating research findings from basic neuroscience to discover the etiology, pathophysiology, and trajectory of mental disorders and the development of effective interventions for children and adults. For the past year, she was on a detail to the National Institute of Nursing Research as the Acting Director of their Division of Extramural Science Programs. At NINR, Dr. Anderson provided scientific, administrative and policy leadership for all NINR extramural scientific, review, grants management and advisory council functions.
Dr. Anderson earned her bachelor’s degree in Biopsychology from Vassar College and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Rutgers University where she studied the neurophysiology of motion and object perceptual integration in non-human primates. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the neural bases of memory and attention in non-human primates and collaborated on studies of memory disorders in humans.
During her time at NIH, Dr. Anderson has served on numerous NIMH and trans-NIH committees, including co-Chair of the NIH Blueprint Coordinating Committee, the Blueprint Human Connectome project team, the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development collaborators committee and the Early Stage Investigators Extensions committee.