Ritu
Nalubola
Ph.D.
Leadership Role
Acting
Deputy Commissioner for Policy, Legislation, and International Affairs - Food and Drug Administration
Ritu Nalubola, Ph.D., is the Acting Deputy Commissioner for Policy, Legislation and International Affairs. In this role, she provides strategic policy direction to advance the FDA’s mission and vision of protecting and promoting public health and oversees the agency’s engagement with Congress and global partners and state, local, territorial and tribal policymakers. She assumed this new role in January 2025, having served as the Associate Commissioner for Policy since November 2024. Previously she served as the Deputy Director of the Office of Policy, Legislation and International Affairs (OPLIA) where she supported the Deputy Commissioner and OPLIA sub-offices to advance the FDA’s policy, legislative and global programs, as well as engagements with Congress and global and domestic partners.
Prior to these senior leadership positions in OPLIA, Dr. Nalubola served as the Director of the FDA’s Europe Office, advancing the priorities of both the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the region. Over the course of Dr. Nalubola’s five-year tenure, the FDA achieved transformative accomplishments in regulatory cooperation with its European and global partners in several areas, including biotechnology innovation; mutual recognition agreements between the U.S., the EU, the U.K. and Switzerland; the illicit trade in health products; the shellfish equivalence arrangement; and digital health and related data governance.
An FDA veteran of more than two decades, Dr. Nalubola also served as a senior policy advisor in the FDA’s Office of Policy where she led FDA’s efforts to modernize the regulatory system for biotechnology products. She also advised senior leadership on various complex and crosscutting policy issues.
Dr. Nalubola earned her doctorate in human nutrition, focusing on nutritional biochemistry, from Michigan State University.