Biography

Robert Hart, Ph.D., recently retired as DIrector of the Institute for Disease Modeling, a unit of the Global Health Division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

IDM utilizes advanced mathematical modeling and statistical and large data analysis to help devise policy and programs to advance the efforts of Bill Gates, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CDC, WHO and multiple ministries of health around the globe to control and eradicate infectious disease in the developing world.  Dr. Hart received his BS degree in Geophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and MS and PhD degrees in Geophysics from the California Institute of Technology.  He has founded and managed multiple software companies as an entrepreneur and as a venture capitalist, spanning the fields of nuclear test detection, oil and mineral exploration, image analysis and machine vision, wireless telecom technologies, ultrasound, and early disease detection among others.

He is an avid amateur astronomer and spends much of his spare time traveling, scuba diving and indulging in underwater photography around the world with his marine biologist wife and, whenever possible, with his three sons and their wives.