Dr. Michelle Berny-Lang serves as a Program Director in the Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives (CSSI) at the NCI. In this role, she contributes to the development, management, and evaluation of CSSI initiatives, facilitating multidisciplinary collaborations among researchers, NCI and NIH colleagues, and external partners.
She co-manages NCI’s longstanding Informatics Technology for Cancer Research (ITCR) Program, which supports critical informatics tools and resources that drive progress in cancer research. With the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), she coordinates a program in Synthetic Biology and Cancer to advance innovative technology approaches to cancer research challenges. She is NCI’s lead for the Big Data Scientist Training Enhancement Program (BD-STEP), a collaboration with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which embeds data science fellows within the VA healthcare system to advance research and patient care. Within NCI, she coordinates the Institutional Development Award (IDeA) co-funding program.
Before joining NCI, Dr. Berny-Lang was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, investigating novel cellular pathways in clinical disorders, including acute coronary syndrome and sickle cell disease. She received her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Oregon Health & Science University, with research focused on platelet biology and mechanisms of thrombosis. She holds a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering from Oregon State University.