Margaret Hamburg elected to Rockefeller Board of Trustees

Rockefeller University’s Trustees have elected Margaret Hamburg, M.D., a former New York City Health Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services and one of the youngest people ever elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine, to serve on the university’s Board.

“Peggy Hamburg is one of the country’s leading advocates for better public health policies and infrastructure at the local, national and global level, and she has a firsthand understanding of the importance of basic science to improving public health. We are fortunate to have the benefit of her wisdom and experience,” says Paul Nurse, Ph.D., the university’s president.

Dr. Hamburg, whose election to the Board was announced following its meeting on November 16, is currently senior scientist at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a foundation dedicated to reducing the threat to public safety from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. A graduate of Radcliffe College and Harvard Medical School, she worked briefly at Rockefeller University in the mid-1980s, and has held positions at the National Institutes of Health, Columbia University School of Public Health, Cornell University Medical College and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Hamburg is the daughter of David Hamburg, a world-renowned physician and himself a trustee emeritus of The Rockefeller University, and Beatrix Hamburg, who was the first African-American woman to be admitted to Vassar College and to earn a degree from the Yale University School of Medicine.