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Laura Lyman Rodriguez, Ph.D., is Deputy Executive Director for Strategy & Planning at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Trained in cell biology and genetics, she has focused her career on developing policies and partnerships to advance research for public benefit and creating resources to inform patient-centered care options.

At PCORI, Rodriguez leads enterprise-wide initiatives, organizational policy and portfolio analyses to assure that research and other program activities reflect stakeholder input, advance PCORI’s National Priorities for Health and maintain PCORI’s commitment to being a learning organization. Through cross-cutting collaboration and leadership she ensures the integrated planning and implementation of PCORI’s strategic objectives and an emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion in all activities. Rodriguez also oversees PCORI’s outreach to communicate with and educate the public, patients and their caregivers, policy makers, researchers, and other stakeholders about PCORI priorities and research contributions.

Prior to joining PCORI, Rodriguez spent more than 16 years at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where she focused on developing and disseminating approaches to integrate ethical considerations and regulatory obligations inherent to genomic and other health data sharing into large-scale data science platforms designed to facilitate the responsible generation of new discoveries and accelerate biomedical and health research.

Nearly all her NIH tenure was with the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), where she served as the Director of the Division of Policy, Communications, and Education for over a decade. As genomic science advanced toward clinical applications, Rodriguez brought the activities under her purview together to engage and prepare researchers, health care providers, patients and the general public for the realization of genomic information as a tool to inform and improve health through prevention and treatment strategies.

Rodriguez also provided NIH-wide leadership for the development and implementation of Genomic Data Sharing Policies and early precision medicine initiatives. Before joining NHGRI, she spent time at the National Academy of Medicine, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology and on Capitol Hill.

Rodriguez earned a doctorate in cell biology from Baylor College of Medicine and a Bachelor of Science with honors in biology from Washington and Lee University.