David Shaywitz was recognized as a Distinguished Alumnus for his pioneering work in the medical industry.
David Shaywitz attended Harvard University where he majored in biochemistry, wrote for The Crimson,
and graduated summa cum laude. He received his MD from the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program and his PhD in biology from MIT, and went on to the Massachusetts General Hospital for his training in internal medicine and endocrinology, and conducted his post-doctoral research at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.
Passionate about translating science into clinical application, he transitioned to industry, working for the next ten years at Merck Research Labs, Boston Consulting Group, and Theravance Biopharma. In 2014, he became the Chief Medical Officer of DNAnexus, a Silicon Valley-based health data management company where he works to deliver collaborative, genome-enabled medicine.
In addition, Shaywitz co-founded the Harvard PASTEUR program for translational research and the Center for Assessment Technology and Continuous Health (CATCH) and was a founding advisor of Sage Bionetworks, a nonprofit medical research initiative for open science. He has also written about complex issues in medicine for leading publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Financial Times, The Boston Globe, and The Atlantic, and writes regularly about entrepreneurial innovation in medicine for Forbes. He is currently a Visiting Scientist (adjunct) in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School and an Adjunct Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
He is co-author, with Lisa Suennen, of Tech Tonics: Can Passionate Entrepreneurs Heal Healthcare With Technology (Hyperink Press, 2013), and co-hosts, with Lisa, the twice-monthly podcast “Tech Tonics,” focused on “the people and passion at the intersection of technology and health.” He lives in the Bay Area with his wife (also a physician-scientist), three daughters, and a clumber spaniel.