US President Joe Biden has picked senior Google Health advisor Dr. Robert Califf as the next chief of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Currently, Califf is a professor of medicine at the Duke University School of Medicine, where he previously served as Vice-Chancellor and founded the Duke Clinical Research Institute. He works as senior advisor for Verily Life Sciences and Google Health, two divisions of parent company Alphabet.
He has led many landmark clinical trials and is one of the most frequently cited authors in biomedical science, with more than 1,200 publications in the peer-reviewed literature.
“As the FDA considers many consequential decisions around vaccine approvals and more, it is mission-critical that we have a steady, independent hand to guide the FDA,” Biden said in a statement on Friday.
“I am confident Dr Califf will ensure that the FDA continues its science and data drive decision-making,” he added.
Alphabet is pushing more aggressively into the healthcare industry.
The latest health research includes a Verily Covid-19 testing program, a Google tool to identify skin conditions, personal health records, and machine learning (ML) projects.
Dr. Califf is an internationally-recognized expert in clinical trial research, health disparities, healthcare quality, and cardiovascular medicine.
