Speakers

Dr. Marty Makary was confirmed on March 25, 2025 by a bipartisan vote of the U.S. Senate as the 27th Commissioner of Food and Drugs.

Prior to joining the FDA, Dr. Makary worked at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he was a surgical oncologist and chief of Islet Transplant Surgery. After six years on the faculty at JHU, Dr. Makary was named an endowed chair in gastrointestinal surgery, and subsequently promoted to full professor with tenure. He also served as a professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and founded the Johns Hopkins Center for Surgical Trials and Outcomes Research.

Dr. Makary is a widely published writer, having authored more than 300 peer-reviewed articles in medical journals. He is the author of three New York Times bestselling books on health care, including: “Unaccountable – What Hospitals Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care;” “The Price We Pay,” which examined health care costs; and which was named 2020 Business Book of the Year by the Association of Business Journalists; and “Blind Spots — When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health,” which presents the latest scientific research on the microbiome, food and other health topics.

Dr. Makary has led cross-disciplinary research on a range of subjects, including cancer care, obesity, frailty and psychologic reserve in older patients, adverse event monitoring, the Orphan Drug Act, antimicrobial resistance, and Alzheimer’s. Of particular note, he is the co-developer of the Surgery Checklist used in many operating rooms around the world today.

Dr. Makary was the first to perform several novel surgical operations, including the first-in-the-world series of laparoscopic pancreas islet transplant operations. For his pioneering work, Dr. Makary was awarded the Nobility in Science Award from the National Pancreas Foundation. For the last 22 years, he has had an active clinical practice.

During the COVID pandemic, he and his Johns Hopkins colleagues conducted landmark antibody studies on natural immunity published in JAMA. Most recently, his research has focused on vulnerable populations in health care.

Dr. Makary has led national quality collaboratives, served on several editorial boards, and was the first editor-in-chief of MedPage Today. He has served in a leadership position at the World Health Organization Patient Safety Program, and in 2018 was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Makary graduated from Bucknell University and earned an M.P.H. from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He received his M.D. from Thomas Jefferson University and did his surgical residency at Georgetown University, completing sub-specialty surgery training at Johns Hopkins University.