EBRC Announces Dr. India Hook-Barnard as the next Executive Director

Dear Colleagues:

With the growth of EBRC and its latest establishment of the BioMADE Manufacturing Innovation Institute, I am incredibly pleased to (re)introduce Dr. India Hook-Barnard as the next Executive Director of EBRC.

India has been a Senior Advisor with EBRC for the last several months and will now be taking over the day-to-day direction and operations of the Consortium. She has deep experience working across industry, government and academia to establish cross-sectoral programs in areas highly relevant to engineering biology. As part of this transition, she’s looking forward to connecting with EBRC’s members and government sponsors to discuss your priorities and our joint opportunities to advance engineering biology goals. I look forward to working with her to grow EBRC’s impact and grow the impact of our field. 

Prior to joining EBRC, India was Senior Advisor to the Beyond 2020: A Vision and Pathway for NIH Working Group, and Senior Vice President for Patient Outcomes and Experience at the National Marrow Donor Program. Before that, she served as the inaugural Executive Director of the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine and as the Director of Research Strategy at the University of California, San Francisco. Earlier in her career, India worked at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine focusing on issues of emerging science and technology, including synthetic biology, precision medicine, biosecurity and biodefense. She earned her PhD in Microbiology—Medicine from the University of Missouri, and continued to study the regulation of gene expression in bacteria and phage during her postdoctoral fellowship at the NIH. India brings a wealth of experience to EBRC and we’re happy to have her join the team.

Reporting through the president to the board, India will oversee all EBRC staff and programs, develop and lead new initiatives, and be your primary EBRC point of contact. India is taking this role at a key time for EBRC: we now have a significant number of ongoing programs and will be up to 10 team members by summer. I will remain actively involved as president by participating in strategic initiatives and key projects. 

Thank you for your engagement with EBRC and I look forward to continuing our work together. 

Best,
Doug