Biden’s new biomedical innovation agency gets its first director

President Joe Biden has chosen Renee Wegrzyn, a 45-year-old applied biologist with a background in industry and government, to head his new agency for biomedical innovation, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H).

Congress created ARPA-H in March with a starting budget of $1 billion. It aims to bring to biomedical research the kind of innovation supported by the Army’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), known for developing the internet and GPS.