Biography

Victor M. Henriquez, Ph.D., is the deputy chief of the Scientific Review Branch in NCATS’ Division of Extramural Activities. He oversees the center’s scientific review officers (SROs), who manage the peer review of grant applications and contract proposals. He helps the branch chief with implementing NIH peer-review policies and practices, collecting and assessing review data and workflows and ensuring the development of research initiatives with strong peer-review language. Henriquez also serves as the scientific review lead for the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program. In that role, he manages Special Emphasis Panel Review Group meetings to assess the technical and scientific merit of CTSA applications.

Before joining NCATS in 2016, Henriquez spent eight years as an SRO at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), where he organized reviews that required expertise from broad and varied areas. These areas included secondary data analysis applications, clinical trial or biomarker clinical validation study planning grants and cooperative agreements, tissue regeneration consortium resource centers planning grants, and novel dental materials cooperative agreements. He also recruited expertise in novel or enhanced dental restorative materials for Class V lesions, oral HIVacc oral mucosal immunization approaches for HIV prevention, and the effects of e-cigarette aerosol mixtures.

Before his time at NIDCR, Henriquez was a postdoctoral fellow in the Clinical Neurosciences Program in the Medical Neurology Branch of the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Working with Christy L. Ludlow, Ph.D., in the Laryngeal and Speech Section, he performed his postdoctoral research focusing on developing a rodent model to study the role of inflammation and neuropathies on changes to the laryngeal reflex.

Henriquez received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from The State University of New York at Stony Brook. He worked with L. Craig Evinger, Ph.D., studying the neuronal integration of sensory and motor systems controlling corneal reflex blinks in normal and craniofacial movement disorders.

Professional Interests

Henriquez’s research interests include craniofacial pain systems, basic neurophysiology, brainstem and cortical motor systems, and adult neurological movement disorders. He has a particular interest in chronic pain and sensory motor systems as they relate to normal and disordered motor control systems.