Harold E. Varmus

Harold Varmus, M.D., is the Lewis Thomas University Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine and a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for studies of the genetic basis of cancer. He was the Director of the National Cancer Institute from 2010 to 2015, after ten years as President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and six years as Director of the National Institutes of Health. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and involved in several initiatives to promote science and health in developing countries. The author of about 400 scientific papers and five books, including a recent memoir entitled The Art and Politics of Science, he was a co-chair of President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, was a co-founder of the Public Library of Science, and chaired the Scientific Board of the Gates Foundation Grand Challenges in Global Health.