Dina N. Paltoo

Dina N. Paltoo, Ph.D., M.P.H. is the Assistant Director, Scientific Strategy and Innovation in the Immediate Office of the Director (IOD) of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In this role, she serves as a senior advisor to the NHLBI Director and provides leadership and strategic direction to complex scientific initiatives and programs related to the NHLBI mission.

Dr. Paltoo came to NHLBI from the Office of the Director, National Library of Medicine (NLM) at NIH, where she served as the Assistant Director for Policy Development and led NLM’s policy and legislative activities that promoted responsible stewardship and access to scientific and clinical data and information, as well as for health information technology. Prior to joining NLM, Dr. Paltoo was the Director of the Division of Scientific Data Sharing Policy and the Director of the Genetics, Health, and Society Program within the NIH Director’s Office of Science Policy (OSP) and was responsible for NIH policy efforts and ethical considerations in scientific data sharing and management, open science, and genomics and health. Dr. Paltoo previously served as a Program Director at NHLBI, where she maintained a scientific portfolio in genetics, pharmacogenetics, and personalized medicine. In her various roles at NIH, she has partnered across the NIH, Department of Health and Human Services, and Federal agencies on initiatives and activities relevant to open science, data science, ands public access.

Dr. Paltoo received her B.S. in Microbiology and Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics from Howard University and her M.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She was a postdoctoral fellow in cellular biophysics and biochemistry at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and is an alumna of the prestigious Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program at NIH’s National Cancer Institute, where her research focus was molecular epidemiology.