Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, is the President of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and Chair of the NAM Council. A surgical oncologist and physician-scientist, her research has advanced understanding of the role of genetics and inflammation in gastrointestinal cancers and soft-tissue sarcomas. She served as director of the National Cancer Institute before becoming director of the NIH and earlier held academic and clinical leadership roles at Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center. A past president and chair of the board of directors for the American Society of Clinical Oncology, she has also served on the boards of the American Cancer Society and the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

Bertagnolli has championed collaborative efforts to build a learning health system by transforming the data infrastructure for clinical research, including by spearheading the mCODE initiative, which enabled standardized oncology data exchange, and DataCOUNTS, an NIH program managing data to drive a learning health system. She is also a strong advocate for increasing the representation of clinical trial participants, particularly from rural and remote communities.

A native of rural Wyoming, Bertagnolli was elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2021. She is the first woman to serve as president of the NAM since its establishment as the Institute of Medicine in 1970.

The daughter of first-generation Italian and French Basque immigrants, Dr. Bertagnolli grew up on a ranch in southwestern Wyoming. 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.