Dr. Chitra Krishnamurthi has been appointed Deputy Director of the Office of Minority Health Affairs at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), MD. She joined her new office on Nov. 29.

In a memo to NIH officials, the Director of the Office of Minority Health Affairs, Dr. Helena Mishoe, said that Dr. Krishnamurthi “brings an extensive research background, publication record, and significant knowledge of NHLBI’s programs from the review and program perspective.”

Prior to this appointment, the India-born Dr. Krishnamurthi was the Scientific Review Administrator at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of NIH in Bethesda in Maryland.

Dr. Krishnamurthi, who moved to the U.S. in 1975 after her marriage, worked as a research associate and then project associate at the Department of Biochemistry at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin.

After moving to Washington, Dr. Krishnamurthi joined the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, MD, as a research chemist, and later became the chief of the Coagulation and Blood Safety Branch, Department of Blood Research, a division of Combat Casualty Care. Dr. Krishnamurthi studied chemistry in her undergrad years at Delhi University in 1969. In 1971, she joined the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, to do her masters in Chemistry. She received her Ph.D. degree from the prestigious, All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi in 1976.