Damali MARTIN

Biography

Dr. Damali Martin is Chief of the Population Studies and Genetics Branch in the Division of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging (NIA).  Dr. Martin oversees the development, coordination and implementation of the division's Population Studies and Genetics of Alzheimer's Disease portfolios.  In addition, she directs the branch's initiatives to better understand the underlying environmental and genetic epidemiological factors impacting disease, among US minority populations and other populations, globally.

Prior to joining NIA, Dr. Martin served as a Senior Program Director, the Cancer Disparities Coordinator and the Global Health Coordinator in the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program in NCI's Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) for 12 years. Her responsibilities included managing a portfolio of large multi-center cancer epidemiology and cohort studies related to health disparities, global health, environmental and genetic epidemiology.

As the Cancer Disparities Coordinator, Dr. Martin worked with trans-NCI staff to provide oversight of activities and to envision strategic opportunities for advancing cancer disparities research. As the Global Health Coordinator, Dr. Martin spearheaded several global health initiatives in the Caribbean and Africa including an assessment of non-Latin Caribbean country policies and services for cervical cancer prevention and control, implementation of the regional IARC Caribbean Cancer Registry Hub, and the creation of a framework for supporting comprehensive cancer research programs in Africa. Dr. Martin also served as scientific officer for the Global Environmental and Occupational Health (GEOHealth) and the Human, Health and Hereditary in Africa (H3Africa) programs; as well as programmatic advisor for several international cancer epidemiology consortia in low- and middle-income countries in the Caribbean and Africa.

Dr. Martin obtained her Ph.D. (2004) in Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Maryland in College Park and her MPH (2005) in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.