Biographical Information
Karen Skinner
Dr. Karen Skinner joined the NIH in 1989 as a program officer in Developmental Neurogenetics at the National Institute on Neurological Disorders and Stroke. She moved to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in 1991, where she currently serves as the Deputy Director for Science and Technology Development in the Division of Neuroscience and Behavior Research at NIDA. Prior to joining the NIH, Dr. Skinner served as a Special Assistant for Science Policy to the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. During 1984-1986 she served as a Congressional Fellow in the office of Senator John Kerry (MA), concentrating on science, health and technology issues associated with the Senator's assignment on the Labor and Human Resources Committee. Dr. Skinner received her B.S. in Chemistry with Special Honors from George Washington University and her doctorate in chemistry from Yale University, where her research involved studying steric influences upon reaction pathways, including calculations of electrostatic and van der Waals forces among atoms in a known crystal structure. Dr. Skinner also holds a Masters degree in Public Administration from Harvard University where her studies included decision theory, statistics, information management systems and macro- and microeconomics. Throughout her career, Dr. Skinner has devoted herself to scientific communication. Prior to joining the government, she served as an Assistant Editor at Chemical and Engineering News magazine, focusing on "Special Reports" and authoring early reports on the emerging field of biotechnology. While at NIH, she served as a visiting scientist at the National Center for Biomedical Information assigned to the electronic publishing project, PubMedCentral. Among her current duties, she also serves on the NIH Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative (BISTI) Consortium and the Project Team for the NIH Roadmap National Centers in Biomedical Computing. Through these activities, she served as co-organzier of the first BISTI sponsored symposium, "Digital Biology" and co-organizer of the 2006 All Hands Meeting of the National Centers for Biomedical Computing.
