Adele Merritt has stepped down as the National Institutes of Health’s chief information officer, Federal News Network reported Friday.
Merritt is joining the University of Maryland’s Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security.

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With Merritt’s departure, Jon Henke, the acting deputy director and deputy CIO at NIH, now serves as the agency’s acting CIO. Henke is also the National Human Genome Research Institute’s CIO.
Who Is Adele Merritt?
Merritt assumed the CIO role at NIH in December, bringing more than 20 years of experience in cyber and national security operations to the position.
Before NIH, she served as the intelligence community CIO at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where she led modernization initiatives to improve security, transform enterprise IT and foster collaboration across intelligence agencies.
The former National Security Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government was also principal deputy CIO for cyber at the Department of Energy and held senior roles at the White House National Security Council Staff.
The Pace University finance graduate holds a master’s degree and a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Rhode Island, Kingston.