Leroy Hood

Institute for Systems Biology (WA, USA)

Dr. Leroy (Lee) Hood is Senior Vice President & Chief Science Officer of Providence St Joseph Health; and Chief Strategy Officer & Co-Founder of the Institute for Systems Biology.

He received his MD from Johns Hopkins and PhD from Caltech. He was a faculty member at Caltech (1970-1992) and University of Washington (UW) (1992-2000). He founded the first cross-disciplinary department of biology at the UW and in 2000 cofounded the independent Institute for Systems Biology where he served as the institute’s president until 2019. He has pioneered 4 important technologies at Caltech (automated DNA and protein sequencing and DNA and peptide synthesis)—which formed the technological foundations for modern biology. He cofounded 17 biotechnology companies, including Amgen and Applied Biosystems. In 2016, he became Chief Science Officer of Providence St. Joseph Health, the third largest nonprofit healthcare systems in the United States.  Dr. Hood has published over 850 peer-reviewed articles and currently holds 36 patents. Dr. Hood is the recipient of many national and international awards, including the Lasker Award for Studies of Immune Diversity (1987), the Kyoto Prize in advanced technology (2002), the Heinz Award for pioneering work in Systems Biology (2006) and the National Medal of Science in 2013 from President Obama.  He is a member of all three US national academies—science, medicine, and engineering.