Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD
President, National Academy of Medicine
Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, is President of U.S. National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and serves as Vice Chair of U.S. National Research Council. She previously served as the 17th Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the 16th Director of the National Cancer Institute. A surgical oncologist and physician-scientist, Bertagnolli’s research has advanced understanding of the role of genetics and inflammation in gastrointestinal cancers and soft-tissue sarcomas. She served as Chief of Surgical Oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and is the Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery Emerita at Harvard Medical School.
Throughout her career, Dr. Bertagnolli has been at the forefront of the field of translational oncology. Her clinical practice of surgery focused on caring for people with hereditary cancer predisposition syndromes, particularly those involving gastrointestinal cancers and soft tissue sarcomas. Her research laboratory examined the relationship between tissue inflammation and tumorigenesis, leading her to pursue clinical trials demonstrating the effects of anti-inflammatory drugs for cancer prevention and treatment. From 2011-2022, Dr. Bertagnolli served as the Group Chair of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, a nationwide network addressing the needs of people with cancer by conducting clinical and translational research across many cancer types.
Throughout her career, she has championed collaborative initiatives to enable a learning healthcare system by transforming the data infrastructure for clinical research. These efforts have included spearheading the mCODE initiative, which enabled standardized oncology data exchange, DataCOUNTS, an NIH program managing data to drive a learning health system, as well as the launch of GHDE, a nonprofit foundation engaging health systems in collaborative research using data obtained from clinical care settings.
Dr. Bertagnolli is a Past President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and has been a member of the Board of Directors of the National Cancer Society, Prevent Cancer Foundation, Natera and Friends of Cancer Research. She also is a member of the Accademia Nazionale de Lincei and the American Adacemy of Achievement, and in 2023, was awarded the title of Cavaliere, Ordine al Merito Della Repubblica Italiana.
Dr. Bertagnolli Bertagnolli was elected as a member of the NAM in 2021 and is the first woman to serve as its president. She graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree and attended medical school at the University of Utah. She trained in surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital and was a research fellow in tumor immunology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.