Erin Lavik, Sc.D.

Erin Lavik, Sc.D., became the second Deputy Director and first Chief Technology Officer of the Division of Cancer Prevention (DCP) in August 2023. In this capacity, she provides leadership in how best to apply promising emerging technologies to the prevention and control of cancer and its consequences.

She has a passion for building research environments that facilitate cross-discipline collaboration for the purpose of tackling problems at the intersection of new technologies and science.

Before joining DCP, Dr. Lavik was a Professor of Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development in the College of Engineering and Information Technology. At UMBC she ran a lab focusing on engineer polymers to protect and repair the nervous system and to treat trauma with a focus on producing safe, effective, and accessible treatments. Prior to this, she was a professor at Case Western and a principal investigator in the Functional Electrical Stimulation Center in Cleveland focusing on translating technologies to help patients with spinal cord and brain injuries.

As Associate Dean, she oversaw the research portfolio of the college ranging from data science and artificial intelligence to novel materials and manufacturing processes and human centered computing. She built mentoring programs and grants workshops along with one-on-one mentoring to help new faculty build successful interdisciplinary research programs. Dr. Lavik also designed a materials science class where students learned the concepts of materials in the context of stories about scientists doing this work along with social justice concepts.

From 2022-2023, Dr. Lavik was an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science Policy Fellow at the Office of Advanced Manufacturing at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In this role she implemented education and workforce development policy across the 16 manufacturing institutes of Manufacturing USA and helped to build a collaborative strategy to leverage Institute successes and reach underserved populations.

Dr. Lavik received her Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Materials Science and Engineering. She won the TR100 award in 2003 and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award in 2010.

Dr. Lavik became at Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers in 2014 and of the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2019.