Biography

Michael Lauer MD served as the Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 2015 to 2025, where he served as the principal scientific leader and advisor to the Director of the NIH on all matters relating to the substance, quality, and effectiveness of the NIH extramural research program and administration. From 2009 to 2015 he was Director of the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, where he led the Institute's program for research on the causes, prevention, and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. He received education and training at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Albany Medical College, Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, and the NHLBI’s Framingham Heart Study. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and a fellowship in cardiology at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital; he is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Medicine. He spent 14 years at Cleveland Clinic as a staff cardiologist and as Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics (Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University). During his tenure at the Clinic, he led a federally funded internationally renowned clinical epidemiology program that applied big data from large-scale electronic health platforms to questions regarding the diagnosis, prognosis, and management of cardiovascular disease. From 2000 to 2007 he served as a part-time editor for the prominent medical journal JAMA, where he oversaw the cardiovascular portfolio and inaugurated a new review-article series. Since he came to the NIH in 2007 (first as NHLBI Director of the Division of Prevention and Population Sciences) he promoted efforts to leverage big data infrastructure to enable high-efficiency epidemiology, comparative effectiveness research, and clinical trials. He has published over 300 articles and commentaries (including corresponding-author publications in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and Lancet) and has received numerous awards including the NIH Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Award of the Year and the Arthur S. Flemming Award for Exceptional Federal Service in recognition of his efforts to grow a culture of learning and accountability.