Tempus, a leader in artificial intelligence and precision medicine, today announced that Norman E. “Ned” Sharpless, MD, will serve as a senior strategic advisor to Tempus and its leadership team, leveraging his vast experience as a medical policy expert and cancer researcher to further the company’s mission of improving patient outcomes.

Dr. Sharpless was most recently the Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, a position he held from 2017 to 2022. He also served as Acting Commissioner for Food and Drugs at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2019, before returning to the NCI directorship. At the NCI, Dr. Sharpless was instrumental in championing health equity and modernizing clinical trials, among many other accomplishments. Prior to the NCI, he was the director of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“Dr. Sharpless has had an indelible impact on the medical community in addressing major public health challenges and spurring innovation,” said Eric Lefkofsky, Founder and CEO of Tempus. “His vast experience in healthcare, and more specifically the oncology space, is invaluable and we are thrilled to have him as an advisor.”

“I’m excited to join the Tempus team and to advance the use of multimodal data to improve the care of adults and children with cancer,” said Dr. Sharpless. “The breadth and depth of the Tempus platform presents a unique opportunity to both identify increasingly personalized treatments and help target our research to focus on the most promising of the next generation of therapeutics for cancer patients.”

Dr. Sharpless received his medical degree from the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine, and completed his clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, both of Harvard Medical School. He is the Professor of Cancer Policy and Innovation at the UNC School of Medicine, co-Founder of Jupiter BioVentures, and a member of the American Association of Physicians and the National Academy of Medicine.

About Tempus

Tempus is a technology company advancing precision medicine through the practical application of artificial intelligence in healthcare. With one of the world’s largest libraries of clinical and molecular data, and an operating system to make that data accessible and useful, Tempus provides AI-enabled precision medicine solutions to physicians to deliver personalized patient care and in parallel facilitates discovery, development and delivery of optimal therapeutics. The goal is for each patient to benefit from the treatment of others who came before by providing physicians with tools that learn as the company gathers more data. For more information, visit tempus.com.

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