Morris J. Birnbaum

Morris J. Birnbaum, M.D., Ph.D. is a physician-scientist who has led research teams investigating fundamental problems in metabolic regulation and their relevance to chronic disease in both an academic and pharmaceutical setting. Research in his academic laboratory included studies related to understanding insulin signaling and resistance, the regulation of glucose transport and lipid synthesis, and muscle metabolism. Among his scientific contributions, Dr. Birnbaum has credited the cloning of the Glut4 glucose transporter, now recognized as the ultimate target of insulin action in muscle and adipose tissue, demonstrating in vivo that the protein kinase Akt is an obligate intermediate in insulin signaling pathways, and elucidating the control of hepatic lipid and carbohydrate metabolism. In 2014, Dr. Birnbaum accepted a position at Pfizer Inc in Cambridge, MA as Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, initially of the Cardiometabolic and subsequently the Internal Medicine Research Unit, where he was responsible for the discovery and early clinical development of drugs designed to treat metabolic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, heart failure and cachexia. Under his leadership, Pfizer has brought seven novel potential medicines into clinical development.

Dr. Birnbaum earned a Ph.D. and an MD from Brown University and completed an Internal Medicine residency at Barnes Hospital at Washington University in St. Louis followed by postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco and Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York. Dr. Birnbaum has held faculty positions at Harvard Medical School, the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He served as a member of the American Diabetes Association Research Policy Committee and the Board of Directors of Cerevel Therapeutics and currently is on the Editorial Boards of Science Signaling and Cell Metabolism.