She is currently serving as VP (interim) for Global Biological Programs and Policy, Nuclear Threat Initiative. Dr. Hamburg is immediate past Chair/President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and just completed a term as Foreign Secretary, National Academy of Medicine. She served as the 21st Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from May 2009 to April 2015. Her public service also included her experience as Assistant Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, then six years as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. In 1997, she was appointed Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, until 2001, when she served as founding Vice President for Biological Programs and later Senior Scientist for the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a foundation dedicated to reducing the threat to public safety from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In that role, she spearheaded
efforts to prevent, detect, and respond to both naturally occurring and deliberately caused biological threats.
Dr. Hamburg serves on a variety of boards, including the GAVI Alliance, Commonwealth
Fund, the Simons Foundation, Ending Pandemics, the Council on Foreign Relations, the
Nature Conservancy, the American Museum of Natural History, the Lasker Foundation, the Urban Institute, and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals. She graduated Harvard College in 1977 and Harvard Medical School in 1983, and has been the recipient of numerous awards and other recognitions.