FDA Chief Scientist Dr. Jesse Goodman Leaves FDA, Dr. Stephen Ostroff Becomes Acting Chief Scientist

FDA Chief Scientist Dr. Jesse Goodman has left FDA to return to academia and clinical medicine. Commissioner Hamburg stated that “As FDA’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Goodman has been a strong voice for both our regulatory science enterprise, and for FDA’s role in U.S. and global public health. Among his many accomplishments as Chief Scientist is the development of FDA’s Medical Countermeasure Initiative, which has better positioned FDA to play a strong role in building the nation’s emergency medical counter measures capacity.”

After his departure from FDA, Dr. Goodman will be serving as Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases and Attending Physician at Georgetown University and the D.C. Veteran’s Administration Hospital. In addition to his teaching and patient care responsibilities, he will direct a new Center on Medical Product Access, Safety and Stewardship.

With Dr. Goodman’s departure, Dr. Stephen Ostroff, who had been Chief Medical Officer in the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and the Senior Public Health Advisor to FDA’s Office of Foods and Veterinary Medicine, has taken on the role of Acting Chief Scientist.

Dr. Ostroff has served in many distinguished roles prior to joining FDA, including at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he served as Deputy Director of National Center for Infectious Diseases and as Acting Director of CDC’s Select Agent Program as well as the Director of the Bureau of Epidemiology and Acting Physician General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Ostroff graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1981 and completed residencies in internal medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and preventive medicine at the CDC. He is a fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America and the American College of Physicians, and currently chairs the Public Health Committee of the American Society for Microbiology’s Public and Scientific Affairs Board.