Orlando David Schärer is a Swiss chemist and biologist researching DNA repair, genomic integrity, and cancer biology.

[2] Majoring in chemistry at ETH Zürich in Switzerland, Schärer received his Diplom (MSc) in 1991 after studying under Professor Duilio Arigoni.

As a graduate student in the laboratory of Professor Gregory L. Verdine, Schärer developed chemical approaches to study the DNA glycosylases in base excision repair.

[3][4] Schärer started his career in 1996, as a Human Frontier Science Program postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Cell Biology and Genetics of Erasmus University Rotterdam under Professors Roland Kanaar and Jan Hoeijmakers.

From 2005, he continued his research as a tenured associate professor at Stony Brook in the Departments of Pharmacological Sciences and Chemistry and as a member of the Institute for Chemical Biology and Drug Design.