Occidental College trustee and Johns Hopkins Professor Namandjé Bumpus ’03 has been named as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s new chief scientist. Bumpus succeeds Rear Admiral Denise Hinton, who was appointed deputy U.S. surgeon general last fall.
As chief scientist, Bumpus will be responsible for the agency’s scientific collaborations, laboratory safety, the transfer of FDA inventions to the private sector, scientific integrity in FDA policy- and decision-making, the professional development of regulatory scientists, and the research on which its regulatory decision-making and regulatory policy is based.
Bumpus is the E.K. Marshall and Thomas H. Maren Professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her laboratory research focuses on precision medicine and the development of drugs to treat and prevent infectious diseases.
“Dr. Bumpus has achieved international recognition for her work and research, which spans basic, translational, and clinical efforts, focusing on drug evaluation science and the development of innovative approaches and novel platforms for pharmacological analysis, drug discovery, drug development, toxicology, biomarker development and personalized/precision medicine, including through the application of bioinformatic tools,” says FDA Commissioner Robert Califf.
"Namandjé is an outstanding choice for the position of chief scientist," says Occidental President Harry J. Elam, Jr. "There is no one better qualified to help ensure that FDA policy is based on the best science. I know the entire Oxy community is proud of this new appointment and joins me in wishing Dr. Bumpus all the best in her new role."
Bumpus joined the faculty at Hopkins in 2010. A biology major at Occidental, she earned her Ph.D. in pharmacology at the University of Michigan in 2007 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular and experimental medicine at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla in 2010.
