Dr. Karin Hoelzer is the Senior Director of Patient Advocacy as BIO. Dr. Hoelzer is a patient advocacy, health policy, risk analysis, and biomedical research expert, with extensive expertise in rare diseases, vaccines, antimicrobial resistance, emerging infectious diseases, and intellectual property rights. Most recently, she was the Senior Director of Policy and Regulatory Affairs at the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD). Before that, she worked at Maximus, Inc., The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Cornell University. She received a PhD in comparative biomedical sciences from Cornell University and a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hannover (Germany). Since 2014, she is also a registered patent agent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Karin also serves as Editor in Chief for a major peer-reviewed international biomedical research journal.