CSR’s primary role is to handle the receipt and review of ~ 75% of the grant applications that NIH receives. NIH separates the review process from funding decisions.
For Reviewers
Reviewers are critical to our mission to see that NIH grant applications receive, fair, independent, expert, and timely scientific reviews. We appreciate the generosity with which reviewers give their time.
News & Policy
The latest news and policy updates from CSR. Read about our outreach programs and publications.
Study Sections
Applications are reviewed in study sections (Scientific Review Group, SRG). Review Branches (RBs) are clusters of study sections based on scientific discipline.
Review Panels & Dates
Applications are reviewed in study sections (Scientific Review Group, SRG). Review Branches (RBs) are clusters of study sections based on scientific discipline.
Dr. Michael O'Connell received his Ph.D. in developmental origins of health and disease (cell and molecular biology) from the University of Southampton School of Medicine in the United Kingdom, in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania. He further trained in the areas of metastatic…
Dr. Susan Gillmor served a faculty member of the chemistry department at George Washington University prior to joining CSR. She won an NSF fellowship pursing her doctoral studies, and after defending her dissertation on DNA microarrays, she joined a start-up company. She returned to academia as a…
How Application Assignments Are Made
The Division of Receipt and Referral (DRR) in the Center for Scientific Review (CSR) assigns each application to a review group with the expertise to evaluate the scientific and technical merit of the application and to one or more institutes/centers for…
Dr. Maria DeBernardi is an Assistant Director in the Division of Receipt and Referral (DRR) at the Center for Scientific Review (CSR).
Prior to this position, she served as Scientific Review Officer in the Interdisciplinary Molecular Sciences and Training review group for seven years. Her primary…
Dr. Zhao is the Scientific Review Officer for the Gastrointestinal Mucosal Pathobiology Study Section within the Digestive, Kidney and Urological Systems Integrated Review Groups. After receiving his graduate degrees, Dr. Zhao had postdoctoral training in the Department of Medicine at Uniformed…
Dr. Alfredo Guerra received his Ph.D. in biological chemistry from Indiana University, where he studied metal-dependent transcriptional regulation. Dr. Guerra conducted his postdoctoral work at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology…
Dr. Daya Jirage earned her Ph. D in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She then pursued post-doctoral research in infectious diseases at the Walter Reed Army of Research. Her research included work on cell cycle regulation in Plasmodium and on process…
Dr. Yan received her Ph.D. in biology from Johns Hopkins University. Her dissertation research at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) focused on immuno-oncology to understand how host immunity affects metastasis. For her post-doctoral training at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr. Yan…
Dr. Maureen Shuh received her Ph.D. at Brown University in biochemistry, molecular biology, and cell biology, and completed her post-doctoral fellowship in molecular retrovirology at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at Frederick. After NCI, she was an assistant and associate professor at Loyola…
Dr. Camandola received her Ph.D. in biology and pathology of aging from a joint program of the University of Turin and the University of Genoa, Italy. Her graduate work focused on the role played by radicals and lipid peroxidation end products in the pathogenesis of liver diseases. She then trained…
Ms. Virdah Zaman received her MS in Industrial Pharmaceutics from Long Island University, New York. She spent several years working as an associate scientist with research institutes at Kings County Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital. Prior to joining CSR, Ms. Zaman served as a Manufacturing…
Dr. Amy Rubinstein serves as Chief of the Basic and Translational Cancer Review Branch (BTC RB).Dr. Rubinstein received her Ph.D. in biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studying the molecular genetics of pollen development in maize. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie…
Dr. Atul Sahai. received a Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from Howard University. He was an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Northwestern University, Chicago, before joining the NIH. The major focus of his research involved delineating the role of chronic local hypoxia in renal/…
Dr. Bidyottam Mittra received a Ph.D. in biochemistry & molecular biology from the Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India, where he studied DNA replication in protozoan parasites and mechanisms of anti-parasitic therapeutics. He pursued his postdoctoral training in molecular microbiology at the…
Dr. Bo Hong did her Ph.D. training in chemistry at Texas A&M University (1993) and her postdoctoral training at the University of Texas at Austin (1993-95). She came to NIH National Center for Research Resources Office of Review in 2003 and served as Scientific Review Officer (SRO) in the areas…
Dr. Jennifer Kielczewski received her Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology from the University of Florida. She obtained post-doctoral training in immunoregulation of the eye at the National Eye Institute (NEI) in the Laboratory of Immunology. Prior to joining CSR, she held a staff scientist…
Dr. Rebecca Burgess came to CSR from a faculty position at Stevenson University in Owings Mills, Maryland, where she taught microbiology, molecular genetics, and cell biology. Her research focused on the impact of chromatin structure on the DNA damage response, as well as best practices in the…
Dr. Syed Quadri serves as Chief of the Cancer Diagnosis, Prevention & Therapeutics Review Branch (CDPT RB).
After earning a Ph.D. (1987) in bioorganic chemistry from George Washington University, Dr. Quadri has conducted basic and translational research focused on human cancers. He began his…
Dr. Tara Earl received her Ph.D. in social work at the University of Texas at Austin and post-doctoral training in health and mental health disparities and health services research through a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Minority/Diversity Supplement. Prior to joining CSR, Dr. Earl was…
Dr. Sara Hargrave received her Ph.D. in behavioral neuroscience from Purdue University, studying the neurobiology of feeding behavior and the impact of diet on blood-brain barrier integrity. She received post-doctoral training at American University, where she studied the effects of diet and drug…
Dr. Yuanna Cheng serves as Chief of the Imaging, Surgery, and Bioengineering Review Branch (ISB RB).
Dr. Yuanna Cheng earned a M.D. in Medicine at Tongji Medical University in China and a Ph.D. in physiology at Medical College of Oita in Japan. This was followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in the…
Dr. Jonathan Peterson received his Ph.D. in exercise physiology at West Virginia University School of Medicine. There he studied the role of fatty acid toxicity on attenuating muscle growth in severe obesity. He then became a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Metabolism and Obesity Research at…
Dr. Liying Guo received her Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and completed her postdoctoral training at the Laboratory of Immunology (LI), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Before joining…
Dr. Dolores Arjona earned her Ph.D. in molecular biology and biochemistry at the Universidad Autonoma of Madrid in Spain. She subsequently completed her postdoctoral training at Virginia Commonwealth University and the Neuro-Oncology Branch at NCI. Her main research efforts were focused on…
Dr. Tatiana Cohen obtained her Ph.D. in pharmacology at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, where she studied transcriptional regulation of muscle-specific genes.
She continued her postdoctoral training at the National Cancer Institute, where she developed transgenic mouse models of human…