Dr. Martin Mendoza serves as the lead for extramural research for the Office of Minority Health and Health Equity (OMHHE), Office of the Commissioner, FDA. In this capacity, Dr. Mendoza oversees all OMH extramural research which includes projects in the FDA Centers of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI) cooperative agreements with Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, Stanford University, the University of California San Francisco, Yale University, and Mayo Clinic. Dr. Mendoza has spoken before Congress in support of OMH’s programs and mission, has authored numerous Congressional response letters and reports, and is also the primary author for OMHHE’s recent FDA guidance document Collection of Race and Ethnicity Data in Clinical Trials.
Prior to joining the FDA, Dr. Mendoza spent several years in the Office of Clinical Research at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), NIH. There, he was part of programmatic management for all NINDS-sponsored clinical trials and oversaw the institute’s extramural human subjects protections activities and the Congressionally-mandated reporting of women and minorities in clinical research. Previously, Dr. Mendoza was an active researcher within the NIH intramural research program, conducting laboratory-based research at the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Aging, and the National Human Genome Research Institute where he served as a genetic mapper for the Human Genome Project. Dr. Mendoza is a graduate of the University of Maryland Baltimore County and received his doctorate in cancer biology from Johns Hopkins University.