Laura McCabe tapped to lead Regulatory Affairs at MSU

Laura McCabe, Ph.D., has been named the new assistant vice president for the Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) at Michigan State University. Her appointment began on August 16, 2021.

McCabe has been serving as director for special projects in ORA for the past year, working closely with J.R. Haywood, who most previously held the position, and ORA unit directors to prepare for her new role. Haywood will soon be joining the Office of Research and Innovation to take on several new responsibilities including oversight of the University Research Organization (URO).

McCabe has been actively involved with COVID-19 research response efforts, coordinating with all units under ORA to develop safety plans for research continuity and reactivation. In the new role, she will be responsible for all current units under Regulatory Affairs and, additionally, under Export Control and Trade Sanctions. She will report directly to Doug Gage, vice president for Research and Innovation, and serve on his leadership team.

An MSU Foundation Professor in the Department of Physiology, McCabe’s research program has focused on preventing osteoporosis and identifying ways to regulate bone mass. She has published extensively on novel mechanisms and therapeutics that target the intestines and treat or prevent bone loss that occurs from conditions such as menopause, intestinal dysbiosis, stress and diabetes.

McCabe comes prepared to lead ORA after serving on national science policy committees with the Federal Demonstration Project, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), and the American Physiological Society (APS). She has been the Chair of the APS Science Policy Committee for the past four years. McCabe also led the MSU Faculty Steering Committee and Faculty Senate from 2017 to 2018. In 2017, she became an Academic Advancement Network fellow assigned to the Office of Research and Innovation, working with Doug Gage for two years, followed by a year in Regulatory Affairs.

“MSU is extremely fortunate to have Dr. McCabe at the helm of the Office of Regulatory Affairs,” Gage said. “Regulatory compliance is critical for the research mission of the university, and it requires nimble responses to changes in requirements at the federal and state level for environmental health and safety, animal care, and human subject protection.

“As an established researcher, Dr. McCabe has a keen appreciation of the faculty perspective and the challenges they face," he continued. "I am confident she will support research efforts with a proactive, consultative approach to compliance, which has been the overarching culture in all units of ORA for some time. Laura and her team will be a key resource for the success of our research activities.

“I want to thank J.R. Haywood for his leadership of ORA and welcome him to a new role in my office," Gage added.

McCabe earned her doctorate in biological sciences at the University of Chicago. She conducted postdoctoral research and instructed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center before joining MSU in 1996. She earned tenure in 2007 in the Departments of Physiology and Radiology. From 2014 to 2018, McCabe was the director and principal investigator for the Beckman Scholar Program.

A leader in her discipline, McCabe is an associate editor for the Journal of Cellular Biochemistry and serves on the editorial boards of Physiologic Reviews, Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, and JBMR Plus. She also serves on national and international grant review panels including NIH, ADA, DOD.