Biography

Coleen A. Boyle, PhD, MSHyg
Director

Coleen Boyle serves as Director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD) at CDC. Dr. Boyle joined NCBDDD’s Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities in 1988, first as Section Chief and later as Branch Chief and Division Director. In 2001, Dr. Boyle was named the Associate Director for Science and Public Health for CDC’s newly created National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD). In October 2004, she was appointed the Director of the Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.

Before joining CDC in 1984 to work on the Agent Orange studies, Dr. Boyle was a faculty member in epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts, Program in Public Health. As part of the Agent Orange staff, Dr. Boyle served as the principal investigator for the Vietnam Experience mortality studies and as senior epidemiologist for a large, multi-centered cancer case-control study. Her interest and expertise is in the epidemiology and prevention of birth defects and developmental disabilities. She is the recipient of the CDC Charles C. Shepard Award for scientific excellence in 1997 and 2004 and has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed and other scientific publications.

Dr. Boyle received her MSHyg in biostatistics and PhD in epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh, School of Public Health, and she completed postdoctoral training in epidemiologic methods at Yale University.