The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently made two new technology appointments, including the hire of Jennifer Wendel as the agency’s deputy chief information officer (CIO), and Wei Ma as the acting director of the Office of Computer and Communication Systems (OCCS) at the agency’s National Library of Medicine (NLM).
Wendel joined NIH at the end of January, after serving at the FBI in several tech roles. Most recently, she served as FBI’s acting deputy CIO, acting deputy assistant director, and section chief for enterprise IT governance.
“For 26 years, I worked with talented and dedicated friends and colleagues to protect the American people and uphold the constitution at the FBI,” Wendel wrote in a LinkedIn post. “I will miss the mission and the people but I am excited to join the HHS team as the deputy chief information officer.”
As for Ma, she first joined NLM in 1998 and has been serving as chief of the application branch at OCCS since 2003. In her new role, she will oversee NLM’s IT services, cloud strategy, security operations, and scientific computing enterprise.
“NLM will benefit from Ms. Ma’s extensive knowledge of NLM’s IT systems, services, and offerings,” said NLM Director Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, Ph.D. “Her leadership will ensure that NLM continues to maintain the high quality, secure information systems and platforms that enable NLM to protect and preserve our massive literature and data resources, and deliver online content to researchers, health care professionals, and patients worldwide.”
The leadership change comes after NLM’s CIO and director of OCCS, Ivor D’Souza, was selected to serve as the acting director of the NIH Center for Information Technology.
