Patricia Flatley Brennan RN, PhD, FAAN

Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, Ph.D., is the Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NLM is the world’s largest biomedical library and the producer of digital information services used by scientists, health professionals and members of the public worldwide.

Since assuming the directorship in August 2016, Dr. Brennan has positioned the Library to be the hub of data science at NIH and a national and international leader in the field. She spearheaded the development of a new strategic plan that envisions NLM as a platform for biomedical discovery and data-powered health. Leveraging NLM’s heavily used data and information resources, intramural research, and extramural research and training programs, Brennan aims for NLM to accelerate data-driven discovery and health, engage with new users in new ways, and develop the workforce for a data-driven future.

Dr. Brennan came to NIH from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was the Lillian L. Moehlman Bascom Professor at the School of Nursing and College of Engineering. She also led the Living Environments Laboratory at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, which develops new ways for effective visualization of high dimensional data.
She received a master of science in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Following seven years of clinical practice in critical care nursing and psychiatric nursing, Dr. Brennan held several academic positions at Marquette University, Milwaukee; Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland; and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.