Orlando Lopez is a biomedical engineer with more than 15 years of experience leading the translation of innovative medical technologies to human use at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
He has extensive experience advancing novel medical innovations through strategic collaborations, partnerships, and creative new programs to incubate technical and business readiness to human use, scale-up and commercialization.
Currently, Dr. Lopez is the director of the Dental Materials and Biomaterials Program and the coordinator of the Small Business Program at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research of the National Institutes of Health (NIDCR/NIH). He provides scientific leadership and strategic vision to strengthen a national research agenda leading basic science and translational research on biomaterials, biosensing and digital technologies addressing unmet clinical needs in dental, oral, and craniofacial conditions.
Lopez serves on various professional committees, working groups, including co-leading trans-NIH initiatives with the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx-rad); and interagency collaborations for the development of clinically relevant standards for dental materials and biosensors with scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and supporting innovators through shared knowledge and resources along colleagues from the Center for Devices and Radiological Health of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (CDRH/FDA) to improve R&D cycles and regulatory evaluations of emerging technologies in dentistry.
Orlando is a mentor with the 21st Century Scholars Program at NIH, empowering early career scientists to overcome challenges in scientific workforce diversity. Prior to NIDCR, he served as lead regulatory reviewer at the CDRH/FDA leading the evaluation of regulatory approvals of medical devices involving a variety of diagnostic, therapeutic and digital health technologies. He is an alumnus of the highly regarded FDA Commissioner’s Fellowship and the NIH Postdoctoral IRTA Fellowship programs.
