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Dr. Philip J. Landrigan is a pediatrician, epidemiologist, and internationally recognized leader in public health and preventive medicine. He has been a member of the faculty of Mount Sinai School of Medicine since 1985 and Chairman of the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine since 1990.

Dr. Landrigan graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1967. In 1977, received a Diploma of Industrial Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He completed a residency in pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital. He then served for 15 years as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer and medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control (the CDC) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. While with CDC, Dr. Landrigan served for one year as a field epidemiologist in El Salvador and for another year in northern Nigeria. He participated in the Global Campaign for the Eradication of Smallpox. He was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal of the US Public Health Service.

In 1987, Dr. Landrigan was elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He was Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine and Editor of Environmental Research. He has chaired committees at the National Academy of Sciences on Environmental Neurotoxicology and on Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children. The NAS report that he directed on pesticides and children's health was instrumental in securing passage of the Food Quality Protection Act, the only environmental law in the United States, that contains explicit provisions for the protection of children. From 1995 to 1997, Dr. Landrigan served on the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veteran's Illnesses. In 1997-1998, Dr. Landrigan served as Senior Advisor on Children's Health to the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and was instrumental in helping to establish a new Office of Children's Health Protection at EPA. From 2000-2002, Dr. Landrigan served on the Armed forces Epidemiological Board. Dr Landrigan served from 1996 to 2005 in the Medical Corps of the United States Naval Reserve. He retired in 2005 at the rank of Captain. He continues to serve as Deputy Command Surgeon General of the New York Naval Militia, New York's Naval National Guard.

Dr. Landrigan is known for his many decades of work in protecting children against environmental threats to health, most notably lead and pesticides. He has been a leader in developing the National Children's Study, the largest study of children's health and he environment ever launched in the United States. He has been centrally involved in the medical and epidemiologic studies that followed the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He has consulted extensively to the World Health Organization.