Craig B. Thompson

Thompson received his bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College and went on to earn his medical degree in 1977 from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. He received clinical training in internal medicine at Harvard Medical School and in medical oncology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center at the University of Washington. After completing his training, Thompson became a physician at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and an assistant professor of medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. In 1987, he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan as an assistant professor of medicine and an assistant investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. From 1993 until he joined the University of Pennsylvania, he was affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was professor of medicine, a Howard Hughes investigator, and director of the Gwen Knapp Center for Lupus and Immunology Research.

Thompson joined the University of Pennsylvania in 1999 as a professor of medicine, the scientific director of The Leonard and Madlyn Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, and the first chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology. In 2006 he was named director of the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania and associate vice president for cancer services of the University of Pennsylvania Health System.

Thompson became president and chief executive officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in November 2010.

He is married to Tullia Lindsten, also a cancer researcher.

In December 2011, The University and its Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute sued Thompson after his move to Memorial Sloan Kettering, charging that he had made use of research conducted at the University of Pennsylvania to start a biotechnology company, Agios Pharmaceuticals that Thompson had co-founded in 2007 while still at the University.

While most of the details were not announced, the suit was settled with an agreement wherein Agios entered into a licensing agreement with the University of Pennsylvania regarding specific intellectual property.