Joni L. Rutter

Joni L. Rutter is an American geneticist and director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). Rutter was previously director of the scientific programs in the All of Us initiative and served as the neuroscience and behavior division director at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Her scientific experience includes clinical research in human genetics and environmental risk factors focusing on the fields of cancer and addiction.

Education
Rutter earned her Ph.D. from Dartmouth Medical School in 1999. Her dissertation was titled, Cell-Type Specific Expression of Matrix Metalloproteinase-1 (MMP-1). Rutter's doctoral advisor was Constance E. Brinckerhoff. Rutter remained at Dartmouth Medical School as a research associate for a short period of time. She then accepted a fellowship at the National Cancer Institute within the division of cancer epidemiology and genetics to research human genetics.

Career
In 2003, she joined the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Rutter became the neuroscience and behavior division director in 2014 after serving as the acting director for three years. In this role, she developed and coordinated research on basic and clinical neuroscience, brain and behavioral development, genetics, epigenetics, computational neuroscience, bioinformatics, and drug discovery. Rutter also coordinated the NIDA Genetics Consortium and biospecimen repository.

Rutter served as the director of scientific programs within the All of Us Research Program, where she led the scientific programmatic development and implementation efforts to build a national research cohort of 1 million or more U.S. participants to advance precision medicine.

Rutter joined the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) as the deputy director. In this role, she oversees the planning, executing and assessing the center's complex and multifaceted preclinical and clinical programs. She is a national spokesperson for translational science. Rutter helps guide the NCATS' Advisory Council and Cures Acceleration Network Review Board activities, and serves as the center's scientific liaison to All of Us. Upon the retirement of NCATS director Christopher P. Austin on April 15, 2021, Rutter became the acting director.

Research
Rutter is internationally recognized for her work in basic and clinical research in human genetics and in the study of genetic and environmental risk factors focusing on the fields of cancer and addiction. In 2015, Rutter stated that risk for addiction is approximately 50 percent genetic. Her primary scientific objective is to integrate genetic principles with environmental influences to more deeply inform understanding of how individual and societal factors impact health and disease.