Kurt Straif is a physician and epidemiologist who teaches and conducts public health research within the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good. Dr Straif served for almost two decades as a senior scientist with the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyons, France. There he directed the flagship unit within IARC that evaluates the carcinogenic hazards of environmental exposures and oversaw the writing and continuous updating of the IARC Handbooks of Cancer Prevention.