Senior Vice President, Spectrum Science Communications
Larry James Thompson has written about science and medicine for more than 30 years, first as a journalist and later as a communications professional, including 19 years at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
In February 2017, Thompson joined Spectrum Science Communications as a senior vice president. Previously, he was senior director of communications in the Johnson & Johnson Office of the Chief Medical Officer, which he joined in May 2014. For the previous 13 years, he was the communications director for the National Human Genome Research Institute, one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health. He entered federal service in 1995 as a science policy analyst and speechwriter for the FDA commissioner and served on the FDA team that sought to regulate tobacco in the 1990s, among other assignments at FDA.
Thompson began his career as a journalist, working in a wide range of media, including newspapers, magazines, books and broadcast. He co-founded the Health Section of The Washington Post, founded the Science and Medicine Section of The San Jose Mercury News, and served as the first medical editor of The Call-Chronicle Newspapers in Allentown, Pa. He was a broadcast correspondent for Medical News Network and was an on-air panelist on WETA’s Science Journal. He has written two books, including Correcting the Code: Inventing the Genetic Cure for the Human Body, published by Simon & Schuster, and has worked as a freelance writer and freelance television producer. He also has coauthor of several peer-reviewed papers and won numerous awards for writing and producing.
Thompson holds an undergraduate degree in biology, a master of science in molecular biology from Lehigh University, and a master of fine arts in film and electronic media from American University, Washington, D.C. He also received the first Dorothy Rider Pool Health Care Trust Fellowship in public health at the Yale University School of Medicine.