Morris J. Birnbaum

Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease Research Unit

Pfizer is committed to innovating potential new therapies in CVMED to continue our legacy and industry leadership in the space.

Morris J. Birnbaum, M.D., Ph.D. is Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease (CVMED) Research Unit at Pfizer, which focuses on developing therapies to treat, slow or prevent disease progression and improve the quality of life of patients with obesity, type 2 diabetes (T2D), cardiovascular (CV) and kidney diseases. Dr. Birnbaum is a leading researcher in the signals that regulate and integrate metabolic pathways in liver, muscle and adipose tissue, and how they are disrupted in insulin resistant states.

Before joining Pfizer, Dr. Birnbaum was Professor of Medicine and Associate Dean for Biomedical Core Resources at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where in 1994 he was appointed the Rhoda and Willard Ware Professor of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Dr. Birnbaum earned his B.A., Ph.D. and M.D. degrees from Brown University. He completed his residency at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, MO, and post-doctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco, as well as at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute. Following an associate professorship at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Birnbaum transferred to the University of Pennsylvania.

He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and the recipient of numerous awards including election to the American Association of Clinical Investigation, the American Association of Physicians, and as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Birnbaum has authored over 200 scientific papers, and served on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Clinical Investigation and Diabetes, the American Diabetes Association Research Policy Committee, and Chaired the NIH Study Section on Cellular Aspects of Diabetes and Obesity.