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Monica Bertagnolli        

Director at National Institutes of Health

Dr. Monica Bertagnolli is the 17th director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the first surgeon and the second woman to hold the position. At the NIH, Dr. Bertagnolli oversees the work of the largest funder of biomedical and behavioral research in the world.

She previously served as the 16th director of the National Cancer Institute, the Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery in surgical oncology at Harvard Medical School, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a member of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Treatment and Sarcoma Centers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Throughout her career, Dr. Bertagnolli has been at the forefront of the field of clinical oncology. Her laboratory focused on understanding the genetic drivers of gastrointestinal cancer development and the role of inflammation as a promoter of cancer growth. She has been a leader of clinical trials and trial networks and has championed collaborative initiatives to transform the data infrastructure for clinical research.

The daughter of Italian and French Basque immigrants, Dr. Bertagnolli grew up on a ranch in Wyoming. She received a BS in engineering from Princeton, attended medical school at the University of Utah, and trained in surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; she was a research fellow in tumor oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

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