Gilbert Omenn, M.D., Ph.D.

Advisory Committee

Gilbert Omenn received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and his doctorate in genetics from the University of Washington. He is a professor in the Departments of Internal Medicine, Human Genetics, and Public Health at the University of Michigan, where he served as Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs and the first Chief Executive Officer of the University of Michigan Health System during 1997-2002. During the previous 15 years he was Dean of the School of Public Health & Community Medicine and Professor of Medicine and Environmental Healt at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research interests include chemoprevention of cancers, genetic predispositions to environmental and occupational health hazards, health promotion for older adults, science-based risk analysis, and health policy. He was Director of the Center for Health Promotion in Older Adults and the creator of a new university-wide initiative on Public Health Genetics in Ethical, Legal, and Policy Context while at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He served as Associate Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy and Associate Director, Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President during the Carter Administration.  He is the author of 396 research papers and scientific reviews and author/editor of 17 books. He was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1978, is a Fellow of the AAAS and the American College of Physicians, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a director of Rohm & Haas and of Amgen, Inc. He chaired the presidential/congressional Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Management ("Omenn Commission"), served on the National Commission on the Environment and the Carnegie Commission Task Force on Judicial and Regulatory Decision Making, and chaired the NAS/NRC/IOM Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy. In 2005, he became the president of AAAS.