Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D. is the former Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, having stepped down from that role in April 2015 after almost six years of service. Dr. Hamburg earned her B.A. from Harvard College, her M.D. from Harvard Medical School and completed her medical residency at Weill Cornell Medical Center. Following her medical training, Dr Hamburg worked at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) doing research and policy as the Assistant Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). In 1991, Dr. Hamburg was named Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health. During her six-year tenure there, she implemented rigorous public health initiatives that tackled the city’s most pressing crises head-on — including improved services for women and children, an internationally recognized Tuberculosis control program, a needle-exchange program to combat HIV transmission, and the nation’s first public health bioterrorism defence program. In 1997, President Clinton named Dr. Hamburg Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She later became founding Vice President for Biological Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a foundation dedicated to reducing the threat to public safety from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In March 2009, President Obama nominated Dr. Hamburg for the post of FDA Commissioner. In that role, Dr. Hamburg emphasized the critical need for innovation in meeting medical care and public health needs. As Commissioner, she provided leadership on many groundbreaking activities, including implementation of new authorities to regulate tobacco products, new legislation designed to transform our nation’s food safety system to one based on prevention rather than simply responding when outbreaks occur, and modernization of the system for the evaluation and approval of medical products. Dr. Hamburg is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American College of Physicians, immediate past-President and now Chair of the Board of AAAS, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, where she serves as Foreign Secretary.