Director of the Division of Extramural Science Programs

Sangeeta Bhargava Ph.D. is the Director of the Division of Extramural Science Programs (DESP) at the National Eye Institute (NEI). Dr. Bhargava provides leadership and guidance for the planning, development, implementation, and evaluation of the NEI extramural research portfolio. DESP provides funding opportunities and a comprehensive set of resources for researchers that support training, basic research, preclinical development, and clinical evaluation. She represents NEI on multiple trans-NIH and interagency working groups, such as the NIH Common Fund’s High Risk-High Rewards Program. She is one of lead coordinators for the Common Fund initiative on PRIMED-AI.

She joined the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) in 2003 as the Program Director of the Immunology and Immunotherapy Program where she managed a portfolio of basic and translational research. At NIDCR, she managed an international contract on Sjogren’s Registry. In 2008, she became Assistant Director at the Division of Receipt and Referral, Center for Scientific Review, where she was involved in the assignment of 80,000 or more competing applications that are submitted for NIH funding annually. She joined NEI in 2015 as the Program Director in the Collaborative Clinical Research Program where she managed a portfolio of clinical trials and studies. Since 2022, she has been working as the Acting Deputy Director in DESP.

Prior to coming to the NIH, she was a senior scientist at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, where she was responsible for research on mucosal immunology with an emphasis on the discovery and preclinical development of viral vaccines. She completed her postdoctoral research on mucosal immunology in the gut and respiratory systems at the University of Pennsylvania. She received a Ph.D. in Reproductive Biology from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, India.