Todd Waldman grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, where he graduated from Walt Whitman High School in 1987. He attended Yale University, where he received a BS (cum laude) in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry in 1991. He then moved to Baltimore, where he attended Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he received an MD/PhD in 1997. His doctoral research focused on developing novel methods for gene targeting in cultured human cells, for which he was awarded the Michael Shanoff Research Prize for the best PhD thesis at Johns Hopkins Medical School. After a brief post-doctoral stint at Hopkins, he moved home to Washington, DC and began his career at the Lombardi Cancer Center as an Assistant Professor of Oncology. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2005. His current research focuses on identifying the genetic mutations responsible for glioblastoma multiforme and exploiting them to develop new treatment opportunities for this dreaded cancer diagnosis.