Dr. Eric Lander has been one of the driving forces behind the genomics revolution. The Whitehead Institute Center for Genome Research, of which he is the founder and Director, has been responsible for developing key tools of modern mammalian genomics. The Center has identified numerous human genes and has made the data available to the scientific community. Dr. Lander and his colleagues have also pioneered in the application of genomics to biomedical research, such as methods for analyzing complex genetic traits. Among diseases of special interest to his group are cancer, diabetes, hypertension and dwarfism.

Dr. Lander is a geneticist, mathematician and molecular biologist. He graduated in mathematics at Princeton, was named a Rhodes Scholar and earned a Ph.D. at the University of Oxford. Concurrently with his Whitehead Institute role, he is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is an enthusiastic teacher who has won the Baker Memorial Award for Undergraduate Teaching at MIT. Among many other distinctions, he was selected to deliver a special Millennium Lecture at the White House in 2000.