Catherine A. McCarty, PhD, MPH, RD, was born and raised in Duluth, Minnesota, USA.  She received her BS and MPH degrees in nutrition from the University of Minnesota and her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh.  After completing her PhD, she was the Head of the Epidemiology Research Unit in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Melbourne, Australia for eight years.  During that time, she directed a population-based study of eye disease in Victoria, Australia and collaborated on similar projects in Hong Kong and in Hyderabad and Chennai, India.  Dr. McCarty returned to the US in 2001 as a Senior Research Scientist at Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation where she was the Principal Investigator for the Personalized Medicine Research Project, a population-based biobank with more than 20,000 adult participants and 20 active research projects.  In 2011, she assumed her current position as Principal Research Scientist at Essentia Institute of Rural Health (EIRH) in Duluth, Minnesota.  She conducts vision research at EIRH and collaborates on translational research projects in a number of clinical areas to improve rural health care delivery.  She was recently appointed to chair the Institutional Review Board at EIRH.  Dr. McCarty’s awards include the Gwen Sebold research award at Marshfield Clinic, Alumni of the Year from her undergraduate college at the University of Minnesota and Silver Fellow of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology.  She has published more than 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts, earned more than $9 million in research grants, been invited to give many scientific talks, and mentored many students.  She is on the VA Genomic Medicine Program Advisory Committee, the Committee for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility at AAAS, and has served as a consultant to several organizations seeking to start biobanks.