OSP Senior Leadership Team

Tyrone Spady, PhD

Division Director
Science Policy Coordination, Collaboration, and Reporting

Tyrone C. Spady is the director of the Science Policy Coordination, Collaboration, and Reporting Division.  In this role, Tyrone leads a talented team to coordinate engagement on behalf of NIH and to manage a suite of emergent policy issues.  The engagements under his jurisdiction include those involving the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, National Academies, Foundation for NIH, Government Accountability Office, and HHS Office of the Inspector General.

Previously, Tyrone worked at the American Society for Plant Biology (ASBP), a member-based scientific organization of over 4500 plant biology researchers.  There, he directed the legislative and educational program portfolio to increase federal support and public awareness of plant science. Among his most notable accomplishments was the launch and growth, over three years, of the annual Agricultural Research Congressional Exhibition.  This event highlighted the contributions of USDA-supported ag research and informed Congress on why more must be done to maintain US leadership on the global stage.  

Prior to that, Tyrone worked at Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology (FASEB) on congressional advocacy, becoming one of FASEB’s two lobbyists. In this capacity, he advocated in support of the National Science Foundation, the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Department of Energy Office of Science.  

He earned his B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He then went on to earn a Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire studying the adaptive evolution of visual sensitivity in East African cichlids, a rapidly evolving assemblage of fishes.  Tyrone completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the NIH National Human Genome Research Institute where he worked on research projects focused on the genetic basis of domestic dog breed defining traits such as dwarfism and coat type.