Dr. Califf was the Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from February 2022 to February 2025. As the top official of the FDA, Dr. Califf was committed to strengthening programs and policies that enable the agency to carry out its mission to protect and promote the public health. He also previously served as FDA Commissioner from February 2016 to January 2017 and was the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Medical Products and Tobacco from February 2015 to February 2016. 

Prior to his most recent appointment to the FDA, Dr. Califf was a professor of medicine and vice chancellor for clinical and translational research at Duke University for nearly two decades. He also served as director of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute and founding director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute. From December 2019 to October 2022, he served as a senior advisor to Verily Life Sciences and Google Health.

A nationally and internationally recognized expert in cardiovascular medicine, health outcomes research, health care quality, and clinical research, Dr. Califf has led many landmark clinical trials and is one of the most frequently cited authors in biomedical science, with more than 1,200 publications in the peer-reviewed literature. 

Dr. Califf became a Member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly known as the Institute of Medicine (IOM)) in 2016, one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine. Dr. Califf has served on numerous IOM committees, and he has served as a member of the FDA Cardiorenal Advisory Panel and FDA Science Board’s Subcommittee on Science and Technology. Dr. Califf has also served on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Library of Medicine, as well as on advisory committees for the National Cancer Institute, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Council of the National Institute on Aging.

While at Duke, Dr. Califf led major initiatives aimed at improving methods and infrastructure for clinical research, including the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI), a public-private partnership co-founded by the FDA and Duke. He also served as the principal investigator for Duke’s Clinical and Translational Science Award and the NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory coordinating center.

Dr. Califf is a graduate of Duke University School of Medicine. He completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and a fellowship in cardiology at Duke.