Michael Lauer, M.D., is the Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he serves 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. 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 spent 14 years at Cleveland Clinic as Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics. 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 and management of cardiovascular disease. From 2007 to 2015 he served as a Division Director at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), where promoted efforts to leverage big data infrastructure to enable high-efficiency population and clinical research and efforts to adopt a research funding culture that reflected data-driven policy. He has received numerous awards including the NIH Equal Employment Opportunity 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.