David Hunter studied medicine at the University of Sydney, before moving to Harvard University for 33 years where he was the Vincent L. Gregory Professor of Cancer Prevention. He is the Richard Doll Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine. He was co-chair of the steering committee of the NCI Breast and Prostate Cancer Cohort Consortium (BPC3) between 2003 and 2012, was codirector of the NCI Cancer Genetic Susceptibility Markers project focused on genome-wide association studies, and was an Eminent Scholar at the NCI between 2004 and 2009. From 2009-2016 he was Dean for Academic Affairs at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, and in 2015-2016 he was Acting Dean. He is one of about 3000 "highly cited researchers" worldwide according to Thomson-Reuters.