Sarah Biber, PhD

Dr. Sarah Biber is the Executive Director for the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC), based at the University of Washington. NACC serves as the data, communication, and collaboration hub for NIA’s National Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers (ADRC) Program, comprised of 36 centers across the United States. NACC is home to one of the largest (54,000+ participants), oldest, and most powerful AD/ADRD datasets, and is currently funded by more than $50M in NIA grants. Dr. Biber co-leads NACC’s strategic and scientific direction in collaboration with NACC’s PI and Director, Dr. Walter Kukull. Within this role, she represents NACC with national partners, spearheads national initiatives, leads academic and industry partnerships, and oversees NACC’s tech, operations, research, communications, and grants and finance teams. She has a PhD in molecular and cellular biology and extensive experience leading strategy for complex centers and programs focused on advancing research and innovation.

Prior to joining NACC in November 2021, Dr. Biber led the Surgical Innovation Program at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) where she shaped and significantly expanded the department of surgery’s innovation capacity and footprint, co-developed surgical innovations, led academic and industry partnerships, and founded the OHSU Invent-a-thon. She previously served as the Assistant Director for NIH’s National Center for Data to Health (CD2H), where she was instrumental in launching the center and led operations to advance informatics innovation, data sharing, software development, and collaboration across the 50+ Clinical Translational Science Awards Program Centers. Prior to CD2H, she was Entrepreneurial Program Director at the Oregon Bioscience Incubator where she helped grow the incubator three-fold and spearheaded statewide partnerships to advance entrepreneurship and startups, served on state-wide committees, and co-founded Accelerate Biotech and Digital Health PDX.