Harold Varmus is the Lewis Thomas University Professor at the Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine and also works at the New York Genome Center. He was the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for studies of the genetic basis of cancer, was the 14th Director of the National Cancer Institute, after 10 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 the Institute of Medicine and is involved in several initiatives to promote science and health in developing countries. The author of over 350 scientific papers and five books, including a recent memoir titled 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 and Chairman of the Board of the Public Library of Science, and chaired the Scientific Board of the Gates Foundation Grand Challenges in Global Health.