Maria Freire


Maria C. Freire, Ph.D., is the president and executive director of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health. She also is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine and Council on Foreign Relations. Freire works in global health, technology commercialization and intellectual property management, focusing on the discovery, development and access to medical interventions.

Education

A native of Lima, Peru, Freire trained at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. She received a Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Virginia and completed postgraduate work in immunology and virology at the University of Virginia and at the University of Tennessee, respectively, and at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship as well as two AAAS Congressional Science Fellowships, sponsored by the Biophysical Society and the American Society for Photobiology.

Career

Maria C. Freire was appointed president and executive director of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health in November 2012 Prior to this appointment, Freire was the president of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation. From 2001 to 2008, she was the president and chief executive officer of the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, a not-for-profit organization that develops drugs to fight tuberculosis.
Freire directed the Office of Technology Transfer at the National Institutes of Health from 1995 to 2001, where she oversaw the transfer of federally funded technology from the not-for-profit sector to the for-profit sector. Prior to that, Freire established and headed the Office of Technology Development at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

National and international member and committee service

Freire is active on national and international boards and committees. She was a member of the Science Board of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and served as chair from 2013 to 2015; is the chair of the business advisory board of the Institute for Biomedical Research, Barcelona, Spain

Selected awards