Office of Strategic Initiatives - Staff

• Lisa Federer
• Tony Chu
• Rebecca Goodwin
• Yaffa Rubinstein
• Leigh Samsel
• Kimberly Thomas
• Constance Young
• Maryam Zaringhalam

Lisa Federer is the Acting Director of the National Library of Medicine’s Office of Strategic Initiatives, serving as principal advisor to the NLM Director on strategic directions of NLM, including open science, analysis, evaluation, and reporting on NLM programs and activities. Prior to this position, Lisa served as NLM’s Data Science and Open Science Librarian and previously served as the Research Data Informationist at the National Institutes of Health Library, where she developed and ran the Library’s Data Services Program. She holds a PhD in information studies from the University of Maryland and an MLIS from the University of California, Los Angeles as well as graduate certificates in data science and data visualization.

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Dr. Tony Chu is an Information and Data Scientist at the National Library of Medicine. Dr. Chu came to NLM with a strong background in behavioral science, research methodology, evaluation, and data management.  He received his master’s and doctoral degrees in Social Psychology from the University of Georgia and spent more than a decade in the private sector doing computer programming, data analysis, statistical computing, and strategic analysis. In 2014, he received a Master of Library and Information Science from Rutgers University, where his medical informatics work familiarized him with NLM resources. He is a member of the first cohort of students who completed the data science training implemented by NLM in 2019.

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Rebecca Goodwin is an open science and data science specialist in the NLM Office of Strategic Initiatives, the NLM technology development coordinator, and the NLM alternate planning and evaluation officer. She supports NLM planning and evaluation activities, coordinates technology transfer for NLM, and provides support and guidance to NLM leadership and staff related to legal and intellectual property (IP) issues affecting NLM. As Executive Secretary for the NIH Common Data Elements (CDE) Task Force and in other activities, Ms. Goodwin plans, develops, implements, and coordinates activities in the areas of open science and the intersection of open science and data science across NLM, NIH, HHS, and beyond. Prior to joining OSI, she spent 7 years working in the NLM Intramural Research Program managing special projects and serving as special assistant to the Director of the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications. She earned her J.D. from the University of Florida and completed a Presidential Management Fellowship at the National Cancer Institute.

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Yaffa Rubinstein is a special volunteer concentrating on Rare Diseases and Open Science after her retirement from the NIH. Before her recent retirement, Yaffa served as the Program Director for Patient Resources for Clinical and Translational Research at the Office of Rare Diseases Research at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS)/NIH. She also served as a member of the PCORI rare disease advisory panel and serves as an active member in the European consortium for rare diseases IRDiRC and RD-Connect.

Yaffa was trained as a molecular biologist and received her M.S. from the Weizmann Institute /Hebrew University in Israel and her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park. She completed her postdoctoral studies at the National Cancer Institute.

While as volunteer at NLM, she continued to be involved in activities within the NIH and various international organizations that she was involved previous to her retirement, Such as, ICORD, RD-Connect, ISBER-(serving as the chair for the Rare Disease WG and the co-chair for the International Specimen Locator WG).

Currently, at NLM, she continued to participate in the CDETF and BIMIC meetings. Last year she organized two international WebEx at the NIH on “Global Perspectives on Standards and Common Data Elements Used in Patients Data and Biospecimens Collection” and “Global perspectives on access to bio-samples and data sharing”. At the moment she is leading a publication “The Case for Open Science: Rare Diseases” in collaboration with other 25 scientists from the NIH, USA and other countries

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Leigh Samsel is the Planning and Evaluation Officer at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In this role, Leigh is responsible for formal reporting of NLM’s accomplishments and providing leadership to inform and guide NLM strategic planning activities.  Leigh serves as NLM’s AIDS Coordinator to the NIH Office of AIDS Research, leading the coordination of NLM’s HIV/AIDS portfolio.  Before joining NLM, Leigh gained experience in the planning, coordination, evaluation, and management of NIH programs as a recipient of a Professional Development Award where she had the unique opportunity to participate in several detail rotations and work with teams across various NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices.  Prior to that, Leigh spent more than a decade in the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Flow Cytometry Core Facility where she consulted with hundreds of researchers and provided training and expertise spanning from experimental design to data analysis and publication, as well as conducted her own research projects.  She spent the early part of her career conducting molecular and cellular biological research.  She holds a B.S. in Genetic Biology from Purdue University and an M.S. in Molecular Biology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

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Kimberly Thomas is the NLM Strategic Evaluation Officer, responsible for formulating and executing a framework for identifying, prioritizing, conducting, and coordinating programmatic evaluations to better understand alignment of NLM activities with its strategic goals and objectives. Prior to joining NLM, Kimberly spent most of her career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using program evaluation and surveillance data to improve programmatic decision-making and to promote data-driven outcomes. She holds a B.S. in Health Science from Georgia Southern University and an M.P.H. in Social and Behavioral Sciences from the Morehouse School of Medicine.

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Maryam Zaringhalam is a Data Science and Open Science Officer at the NLM. In this role, she is responsible for monitoring and coordinating data science and open science activities and development across NLM, NIH, and beyond, with an emphasis on the extramural research community. She completed her Ph.D. at Rockefeller University in 2017 in molecular biology and bioinformatics. She then moved to Washington D.C. to become an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at NLM, focusing on open science and data science policy.

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Last Reviewed: January 22, 2024