Global Cancer Conversations: Elisabete Weiderpass, MD, MSc, PhD

Dr. Elisabete Weiderpass serves as Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is a dedicated U.N. agency whose mission is cancer research. The U.S. government has been a long-standing supporter of IARC and IARC has been a long-standing and critical scientific partner to the NCI. Dr. Weiderpass has been involved in global cancer research in her scientific career long before becoming the IARC Director and talks to Dr. Satish Gopal about how her interest in global cancer first developed, being the first female IARC director, and IARC’s medium-term strategy for the next five years.

Dr. Elisabete Weiderpass, MD, MSc, Ph.D., is a Brazilian cancer researcher who is a naturalized Swedish and Finnish citizen. She is an expert in cancer epidemiology and cancer prevention. She took office as IARC Director on January 1, 2019. Dr. Weiderpass previously served as leader of the Department of Research at the Cancer Registry of Norway, and of the Genetic Epidemiology Group at the Folkhälsan Research Center in Finland. She was a Professor of Medical Epidemiology at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, and a Professor of Cancer Epidemiology at the Arctic University of Norway. She also held Adjunct Professorship positions in Cancer Epidemiology in Brazil, China, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and was a Visiting Professor in Kuwait. She is the author of more than 700 scientific publications in peer-reviewed international journals.