Protected: Dr. Maryrose Franko

Dr. Maryrose Franko is Executive Director of the Health Research Alliance which is a consortium of over 110 nonprofit funders of biomedical research committed to increasing the impact of biomedical research. She has been leading the Health Research Alliance for eight years.  Her pronouns are she/her. 
 
Dr. Franko’s background includes over 20 years of program management at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), including strategic planning as well as creating, implementing, and managing over a dozen programs and initiatives. These include graduate, medical student and postdoctoral research fellowships, and an innovative and groundbreaking joint initiative with the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Franko also ran both the graduate and undergraduate programs at HHMI’s state-of-the-art research facility, Janelia Research Campus, and created professional development opportunities for Janelia’s postdocs. Dr. Franko’s collaboration with the Burroughs Wellcome fund to develop a residential Lab Leadership and Management course, led to the creation of the still popular book, Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty, and the companion guide, Training Scientists to Make the Right Moves, which were joint efforts of HHMI and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. 
 
Dr. Franko received her Ph.D. in molecular genetics from the University of Southern California and did a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health before joining HHMI. During her time at HHMI, Franko was a founding board member of HRA, and created HRA’s Research Workforce and Early Career Development Community to help funders understand and address challenges to the biomedical workforce. 

email: maryrose@healthra.org