Alison Cernich, Ph.D.
Alison N. Cernich is the acting Director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and will perform these duties until a new NICHD Director is selected. As acting Director, she oversees the institute's research on pediatric health and development, maternal and reproductive health, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and rehabilitation medicine, among other areas. These efforts include managing a staff of approximately 1,500 people and an annual budget of approximately $1.75 billion.
Dr. Cernich also continues in her role as Deputy Director of NICHD wherein she leads internal governance of the institute, represents NICHD on wide-ranging National Institutes of Health initiatives in maternal and women’s health, data science, neuroscience, behavioral and social science, and pain, and represents NIH in interagency efforts to improve maternal and women’s health. In these dual roles, she will continue to support the Institute’s mission to lead research and training to understand human development, improve reproductive health, enhance the lives of children and adolescents, and optimize abilities for all. Prior to her role as Deputy Director of NICHD, Dr. Cernich served as the director of the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research at NICHD from 2015 to 2019.
Dr. Cernich led the refresh of the NICHD Strategic Plan launched in January 2025. The new five-year plan retains the original research goals published in its 2020 plan but offers updated strategies for achieving them. These strategies reflect progress in the scientific landscape and new opportunities for scientific discovery, such as advances in computational biology, artificial intelligence, advanced imaging techniques, pharmacogenomics, bioinformatics, and other methods.
Before joining NIH, Dr. Cernich worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs. She began her career at the VA Maryland Health Care System, and served as Chief of Neuropsychology, Director of the Polytrauma Support Clinic Team, and as a funded investigator through the VA Rehabilitation Research and Development Service. She was an Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine where she focused on the effects of aerobic exercise on cognition in the context of neurologic conditions. She later moved to VA Central Office where she served first as a liaison to the Department of Defense for Traumatic Brain Injury and then as the Deputy Director for the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE). In these roles she coordinated prevention, education, research and clinical care efforts for service members and veterans.
Cernich completed a predoctoral research fellowship in outcomes measurement at the Kessler Medical Rehabilitation Research and Education Corporation, funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. She received her doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson University and completed post-doctoral training in cognitive neuroscience at the Medstar National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, DC. She is a board-certified neuropsychologist and is the lead or contributing author on multiple peer-reviewed articles and conference presentations, with an emphasis on disability and pregnancy, traumatic brain injury, and computerized neuropsychological assessment. Dr. Cernich’s current scientific focus is understanding the longitudinal course of functional impairment and the impact of assistive technologies on functioning using the All of Us platform in collaboration with the Rehabilitation Medicine Department, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Section, at the NIH Clinical Center.
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