Former New York City health commissioner Margaret Hamburg seems to be the Obama administration's pick to head the embattled Food and Drug Administration, with Baltimore health commissioner Joshua Sharfstein slated to serve as FDA's deputy commissioner, according to The Washington Post.

Hamburg served as NYC health commissioner for much of the 1990s, after a brief stint at the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. She later served under President Bill Clinton as an administrator focused on bioterrorism at the Department of Health and Human Services, and is currently vice president for biological programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a non-profit organization cofounded by media magnate Ted Turner that addresses global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

Obama is expected to announce his choice of Hamburg soon, after which she will face Congressional confirmation. Sharfstein, whose name was previously bandied about as a potential FDA head, will not require such confirmation.

Rumors about who will lead the National Institutes of Health are also swirling. The In Vivo blog reported yesterday that Yale geneticist Rick Lifton is in the running for NIH director, along with former National Human Genome Research Institute head Francis Collins and National Heart Lung and Blood Institute director Elizabeth Nabel.


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