In a notice posted on its Center for Tobacco Products newsroom on October 14, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration named Holger Behrsing, Ph.D., Kim “Skip” Murray, Margaret Nolan, M.D., and Andrew A. Strasser, Ph.D., as new voting members of the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC). Murray was designated as the committee’s representative of the general public. The agency also selected Eric Ray Walker, Ph.D., as alternate non-voting member representing the interests of tobacco growers.
According to the FDA, the new members bring expertise in preventive medicine, chronic diseases, tobacco cessation and harm reduction, toxicology, cell biology and health communication.
Who the new members are
The FDA announcement gives names only. Affiliations appear in the committee’s entry in the federal Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) database, which lists:
- Holger Behrsing as director and head of the respiratory toxicology programme at the Institute for In Vitro Sciences (IIVS);
- Margaret Nolan as research investigator and staff physician at HealthPartners Institute;
- Andrew Strasser as director of the Biobehavioral Smoking Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania;
- Kim Murray as a public health advocate;
- Eric Walker as an agronomist at Burley Stabilization Corporation, the organisation that also employed the previous growers’ alternate, William Maksymowicz, according to the FDA’s TPSAC roster.
The same database shows that all five terms started on July 12, 2026 and run until July 6, 2030. The appointments therefore predate the public announcement by three months.
A months-long gap
The new members fill seats that had been empty since the start of the year. The FDA roster shows that the terms of four voting members, Mignonne Guy, Risa Robinson, NFN Scout and Dona Upson, expired on January 31, 2026. The agency had issued a call for nominations in June 2025 for five vacancies, including one for a representative of the general public and one for a government employee.
As a result, the outgoing members sat on the committee’s last meeting, held on January 22, 2026 to review the modified risk applications for 20 ZYN nicotine pouches. The FDA granted those orders on June 30, before the new members took their seats.
Harm reduction in the public seat
Under the Tobacco Control Act, one of TPSAC’s nine voting members must be a representative of the general public. The seat was previously held by NFN Scout, executive director of the National LGBT Cancer Network.
Murray, who lives in Minnesota, is a tobacco harm reduction advocate. In written testimony opposing a flavour restriction bill (HF 904) before a Minnesota House committee, she stated that she had quit smoking with flavoured vaping products and that three generations of her family had used them to stop smoking.
In published author biographies, Murray also states that she has served as research fellow for the Consumer Center of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA). The TPA does not disclose its funding, and several of its staff and associates have links to organisations that received tobacco industry money, according to Tobacco Tactics, the tobacco industry monitoring project run by the University of Bath.
The general public seat is a voting position. It is distinct from the three non-voting seats reserved for industry interests: the tobacco manufacturing industry, tobacco growers and small tobacco manufacturers.
In vitro toxicology
Behrsing’s field is directly relevant to the evaluation of non-combustible products. IIVS opened a respiratory exposure laboratory in 2017 to test, among other things, traditional and emerging tobacco products. The institute has also reported conducting a multi-laboratory study in collaboration with Philip Morris International on the reproducibility of in vitro respiratory assays, in which Behrsing was quoted.
In 2016, IIVS hosted a workshop on in vitro exposure systems for tobacco smoke and e-cigarette aerosols. Its proceedings, with Behrsing as first author, list co-authors from British American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco alongside scientists from U.S. federal agencies and universities.
The FDA asks candidates to disclose financial holdings, employment, research grants and contracts so that potential conflicts of interest can be assessed. Nearly all non-federal members serve as special government employees, and the FACA database lists all four new voting members in that category.
Two more seats to fill
Alongside the appointments, the FDA published a Federal Register notice on October 15 (91 FR 65592, docket FDA-2026-N-11624) seeking nominations for two voting vacancies. The agency is looking for physicians, dentists, scientists or health care professionals working in oncology, pulmonology, cardiology, toxicology, pharmacology, addiction, engineering or another relevant specialty.
Nominations received by December 14, 2026 will be given first consideration; later submissions will be kept for future vacancies. Candidates may nominate themselves or be nominated by any person or organisation, via the FDA’s online nomination portal or by mail, and each nomination must include a current CV. Members serve terms of up to four years.
The notice does not say which seats are concerned. On the current roster, the terms of Sven-Eric Jordt (Duke University) and Nancy Rigotti (Massachusetts General Hospital) end on January 31, 2027.
What TPSAC does
TPSAC has 12 members, nine of them voting, including the chair, currently Cristine Delnevo of Rutgers University. It reviews safety, dependence and health issues related to tobacco products and advises the FDA Commissioner. By law, the FDA must refer every modified risk tobacco product (MRTP) application to the committee before deciding on it.
Its opinions are advisory only, and the FDA is not bound by them. According to the agency’s latest FACA report, the committee has issued 17 recommendations since 2009, of which 84% have been fully implemented and 10% partially. In fiscal year 2026, it met twice: on October 7, 2025, to discuss the renewal of the modified risk orders for several IQOS products, which the FDA later renewed, and on January 22, 2026, for ZYN.
The new line-up takes shape as the agency’s approach to non-combustible products shifts under acting CTP director Bret Koplow, a change Vaping Post has examined, and after the FDA authorised its first fruit-flavoured e-cigarettes in May.
