Mia Rochelle Lowden, PhD
Chief Diversity Officer
Mia Rochelle Lowden, PhD, is the Chief Diversity Officer at the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR).
Dr. Lowden provides strategic leadership for NINR to advance Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA). She also co-leads the Stewardship Writing Group for the NIH DEIA Strategic Plan, and co-chairs the Understanding stakeholder experiences through listening and learning (U) Committee of the NIH UNITE Initiative for Ending Structural Racism. She serves on the Steering Committee of the NIH Committee on Women of Color in Biomedical Careers and is Chair-Emeritus and a Steering Committee member of the Special Populations Research Forum.
She joins NINR from the NIH Office of the Director, where she managed the HIV/AIDS Scholars Program and created a communications strategy that helped expand the social media presence of the Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP). Before that, she coordinated strategic planning activities for the NIH Alzheimer’s disease research portfolio while serving at the National Institute on Aging (NIA).
Dr. Lowden received her PhD in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied genomic dynamics of cells at the early stages of cancer. After postdoctoral training in endocrinology at the University of Virginia, she completed the Science & Technology Policy Fellowships Program through the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
During her AAAS fellowship, Dr. Lowden co-founded the Science Technology and Art Affinity Group. She integrates her interest in art into science outreach activities and has designed multiple graphics used at NIH. She is a proud alumna of Carleton College where she first discovered blending art and science and received a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry.