Dr. Varmus is the Lewis Thomas University professor of medicine at the Meyer Cancer Center of Weill Cornell Medicine. He is also a senior associate member of the New York Genome Center, where he helps to develop programs in cancer genomics, and an adjunct professor at the Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York. Previously, Dr. Varmus was the director of the National Cancer Institute, the president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and director of the National Institutes of Health. He was co-recipient of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his studies of the genetic basis of cancer. He is a member of the National Academies of Sciences and Medicine, is involved in several initiatives to promote science and health in developing countries and serves on advisory groups for several academic, governmental, philanthropic and commercial institutions. These positions currently include co-chair of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s LifeSci NYC initiative and member of advisory boards for Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Broad and Crick Institutes, the global health program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and three biotechnology companies. Dr. Varmus is the author of approximately 400 scientific papers and five books, including a 2009 memoir entitled The Art and Politics of Science. He was a co-chair of President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a co-founder and Chairman of the Board of the Public Library of Science and chair of the Scientific Board of the Gates Foundation Grand Challenges in Global Health. He received his M.D. from Columbia University.