John Wilbanks is the Head of Data at Biogen Digital Health, leading a team that builds products and services making clinical study data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable inside the company. He was formerly chief commons officer at Sage Bionetworks, where he led efforts in data governance for cloud science and informed consent for phone and wearable driven clinical research. He also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Milken Institute’s Faster Cures program. 

Previously, Wilbanks worked as a legislative aide to Congressman Fortney “Pete” Stark, served as the first assistant director at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, founded and led to acquisition the bioinformatics company Incellico, Inc., and was vice president of science at Creative Commons. He also served as a senior fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, on the National Advisory Board for PubMed Central at the National Institutes of Health, and as a senior advisor for big data to the National Coordination Office at the National Science Foundation. 

In February 2013, in response to a We the People petition that was co-led by Wilbanks and signed by 65,000 people, the U.S. government announced a plan to open up taxpayer-funded research data and make it available for free. 

Wilbanks received a B.A. in philosophy from Tulane University.