Biography

Kristopher J. Bough is a program director in the Initiatives & Consortium-Wide Activities Section of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program Branch within NCATS’ Division of Clinical Innovation, where he manages several CTSA Program Hubs.

Prior to joining NCATS, Bough was the director of the Small Business Innovation Research program and team lead for HIV/AIDS research and training at the National Institute of Nursing Research. He also served as a program director at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) from 2008 to 2020, where he helped establish and lead the NIDA-Tobacco Regulatory Science Program — an interagency partnership with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to foster tobacco regulatory research — and the Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats (CounterACT) Program — an NIH-wide initiative that supports research and development of new and improved therapeutics against chemical threat agents. He has also served on several NIH-wide committees. Bough began his career in federal service at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research in 2005.

Bough earned a B.S. in biology from Gettysburg College and a Ph.D. in biology (neuroscience) from Georgetown University. He completed postdoctoral training in neurological surgery at the University of Washington and in pharmacology at Emory University, where he studied the mechanistic underpinnings of the ketogenic diet as a treatment for intractable seizures.

Professional Interests

Bough has broad interests in translation and translational science, with particular interest in the development of point-of-care technologies designed for diagnosis and prevention, as well as their clinical implementation and dissemination. He also is interested in biomarkers as predictors and monitors of disease and as tools to expedite therapeutic development.