Guru Madhavan is a senior program officer and director of studies at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, where his portfolio of work has included leading: a global health program on infectious diseases, the creation of a decision support platform to help prioritize new vaccine development, and the analyses for making prescription medicines affordable and toward a national strategy for cancer control in the United States. He has given invited briefings at several state and federal agencies, Capitol Hill, European Commission, and the World Health Organization. He has served as a technical adviser to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and has been a strategic consultant for technology startup firms and nonprofit organizations. A systems engineer by background, he received his M.S. and Ph.D. in biomedical engineering and an M.B.A. from the State University of New York. He has worked in the medical device industry as a research scientist developing cardiac surgical catheters for ablation therapy and advised the development and testing of neuromuscular stimulators for improving blood circulation. He has served two-terms as a vice-president and member of the board of directors of IEEE-USA. His honors include the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation’s AAMI–Becton Dickinson Award for Professional Achievement, the IEEE–USA Professional Achievement Award, and the Washington Academy of Sciences’ Krupsaw Award for engineering sciences and education. He has also received the inaugural Innovator Award and the Cecil Medal from the presidents of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He was a founding member of the Global Young Academy, and has been named a distinguished young scientist by the World Economic Forum. He has co-edited eight books, and is author of Applied Minds: How Engineers Think (W.W. Norton) that has been published in multiple foreign markets and languages.