Rear Adm. Mary Riggs, commander of the U.S. Navy‘s Reserve Component Expeditionary Medicine, has been assigned as director of research and development at the Defense Health Agency.
Navy Secretary Richard Spencer and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson announced Riggs’ new assignment in a Defense Department press release published Thursday.
Riggs previously served as deputy director of the military branch’s Nurse Corps and reserve policy and integration office; deputy chief of staff at the Reserve Navy Medicine Education and Training Command; and commanding officer of the Operational Health Support Unit-Portsmouth.
During her civilian career, she pursued pharmaceutical research and development projects and established a clinical research organization that conducted scientific clinical trials of experimental cardiovascular drugs.
She graduated magna cum laude from the Catholic University of America with a bachelor’s degree in nursing earned her master’s degree in physiology and biophysics from Georgetown University.
