Staff Bio
Reynolds M. Salerno, PhD, is the Acting Associate Director for Laboratory Science and Safety (ADLSS).
Role at CDC
In addition to serving as Acting ADLSS, Dr. Salerno also serves as Acting Director of the Office of Laboratory Science and Safety (OLSS) and Acting Director of the Center for Laboratory Systems and Response (CLSR). Dr. Salerno's permanent role is CDC’s Director of the Division of Laboratory Systems.
In these capacities, Dr. Salerno provides high-level oversight and coordination of critical laboratory science policies and operations, as well as management of laboratory safety and quality within CDC. He also serves as the interface between CDC and the clinical and public health laboratory and testing community.
Dr. Salerno works to strengthen the U.S. clinical and public health laboratory systems by continually improving quality and safety, informatics and data science, and workforce competency. He also is the Designated Federal Officer of the U.S. Clinical Laboratory Improvement Advisory Committee.
Previous experience
Dr. Salerno served as lead of CDC's Expansion of Screening and Diagnostics Task Force for the COVID-19 Response, co-lead of CDC's Laboratory and Testing Task Force for the COVID-19 Response, and senior advisor for laboratory and testing for CDC's Mpox response. He represents CDC on the HHS Testing Coordination Group, the Tri-Agency Task Force for Emergency Diagnostics, and the Federal Interagency Working Group on Improving Diagnostic Safety and Quality in Healthcare.
Before joining CDC in January 2016, Dr. Salerno had a 17-year career at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM, where he oversaw research in Sandia's biological laboratories and supported the U.S. government's global health security agenda as a technical adviser to hundreds of laboratories in over 50 countries. He was the lead author of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) laboratory biorisk management standard (ISO 35001, 2019) and the co-author of Laboratory Biorisk Management: Biosafety and Biosecurity (CRC Press, 2015) and Laboratory Biosecurity Handbook (CRC Press, 2007).