ERIC S. LANDER, PH.D. - Scientist

Dr. Eric Lander is the Director of the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is Professor of Biology at MIT, Professor of Systems Biology at the Harvard Medical School and a Member of The Whitehead Institute. He is a geneticist, molecular biologist and mathematician.

He is one of the driving forces behind today’s revolution in genomics, the study of all of the genes in an organism and how they function together in health and disease. He has been one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project. He founded The Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research in 1991, and the Center became part of the newly-founded Broad Institute in 2003. Under Dr. Lander’s leadership, the Center has developed many of the key tools of modern human and mammalian genomics and has applied them to pioneer new ways to understand the basis of disease.

Dr. Lander earned his B.A. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1978, and his Ph.D. in mathematics from Oxford University in 1981. In addition to his work in biology, he was an assistant and associate professor of managerial economics at the Harvard Business School from 1981 to 1990.

Dr. Lander was named a Rhodes Scholar in 1978, and received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1987 for his work in genetics. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1997, the U.S. Institute of Medicine in 1998, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999. He has received numerous awards and honorary degrees, and has served on many advisory boards for governments, academic institutions, scientific societies and companies.

In addition to his research, Dr. Lander is an enthusiastic teacher. He has taught MIT’s core introductory biology course for a decade; and in 1992, won the Baker Memorial Award for Undergraduate Teaching at MIT. He has also lectured widely to both scientific and lay audiences about the medical and social implications of genetics, and was selected to deliver a special Millennium Lecture at the White House in 2000.