Steven Kern

(Last updated during their term as a Commissioner - January 2022)

Steven Kern is the deputy director, Quantitative Sciences, at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, based in Seattle, Washington, US. He leads a team that provides a crucial evidence-intermediary role, providing quantitative analysis – including data analytics and other forms of evidence – to support foundation teams for therapeutics projects. Before joining the foundation, he was global head of pharmacology modeling at Novartis Pharma AG (based in Basel, Switzerland), where he led a team that provided model-based drug-development support to therapeutics projects in many disease areas and across all stages of drug development. Earlier, he was an associate professor of pharmaceutics, anesthesiology, and bioengineering at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he served as co-investigator for the National Institutes of Health–funded Pediatric Pharmacology Research Unit. Steven has designed, conducted, and served as a principal investigator for clinical pharmacology studies that span the population from preterm infants to elderly adults. Steven has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University, a master’s degree in bioengineering from Penn State University, and a doctoral degree in bioengineering from the University of Utah. He has published more than 60 papers in the areas of pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic modeling, applying principles of control systems engineering to drug delivery and clinical pharmacology.