Gary L. Kreps, PhD, has served as Chief of the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute since 1999. Prior to joining the National Cancer Institute, he was the Founding Dean of the School of Communication at Hofstra University, New York, and before that, Executive Director of the Greenspun School of Communication at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He has also served in faculty and administrative positions at Northern Illinois, Rutgers, Indiana, and Purdue Universities.

He received his PhD in communication from the University of Southern California in 1979. His areas of research expertise include health communication, health promotion, e-health, organizational communication, multicultural relations, and applied research methods. He has published widely (more than 20 books and more than 130 chapters and scholarly articles) about communication and society. He also edits two book series for Hampton Press on "Health Communication" and "Communication and Social Organization."

He has received many academic honors, including the Outstanding Health Communication Scholar Award (2000) from the International Communication Association and the National Communication Association, and the Gerald M. Phillips Distinguished Applied Communication Scholarship Award (1998) from the National Communication Association. He serves on numerous scientific editorial boards and recently edited special issues of The Journal of Health Psychology on "E-Health: Computer-Mediated Health Communication" and The Electronic Journal of Communication/La Revue Electronique de Communication on "Health Communication and Information Technology."