Lieber Institute for Brain Development Appoints Keri Martinowich, Ph.D., as Chief Scientific Officer
Baltimore, MD (January 6, 2025) — The Lieber Institute for Brain Development (LIBD) announced the appointment of Keri Martinowich, Ph.D., as Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), marking a major milestone as the Institute enters its fifteenth year of operations and advances its mission to transform the understanding and treatment of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.
Dr. Martinowich brings internationally recognized scientific leadership, deep expertise in translational neuroscience, and more than a decade of experience advancing LIBD’s research portfolio. She previously served as Senior Investigator and Director of Translational Neuroscience at LIBD and is a Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Her appointment follows a national search conducted in collaboration with the Institute’s Scientific Advisory Board and reflects a strategic leadership transition as neuroscience enters a period of rapid transformation driven by advances in genomics, spatial biology, computational methods, and artificial intelligence.
“The science at the center of what we do is changing extraordinarily fast,” said Daniel R. Weinberger, M.D., Director and CEO of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development. “Dr. Martinowich brings the rare combination of intellectual rigor, scientific creativity, and collaborative leadership needed to guide our research enterprise through this next phase. The decision to appoint her as Chief Scientific Officer was unanimous.”
Dr. Martinowich’s research has helped define how molecular-genetic programs within specific cell types and neural circuits contribute to behavior, disease vulnerability, and brain plasticity. Her early work established foundational insights into epigenetic regulation of activity-dependent genes, including brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Her subsequent research has integrated molecular, cellular and systems neuroscience approaches to study disease-relevant neural circuits across species.
Today, her laboratory employs cutting-edge approaches, including spatially-resolved transcriptomics, single-cell genomics, and data-driven computational methods, to study how molecular heterogeneity in the human brain is organized in space and how that organization may underlie selective vulnerability in psychiatric and neurodegenerative disease.
“Dr. Martinowich is an exceptional scientist and an exceptional leader,” said Pat Levitt, Ph.D., Chair of LIBD’s Scientific Advisory Board. “Her vision, judgment, and ability to integrate complex biological data across scales make her uniquely qualified to serve as Chief Scientific Officer at this pivotal moment for the Institute.”
As CSO, Dr. Martinowich will oversee LIBD’s scientific strategy, foster integration across basic, translational, and drug discovery programs, and help guide the Institute’s expanding use of large-scale human brain datasets and computational tools to accelerate discovery. She will also play a key role in strengthening external collaborations across academia, industry, and philanthropy.
“It is an honor to serve as Chief Scientific Officer at the Lieber Institute,” said Dr. Martinowich. “LIBD has built an extraordinary foundation in human brain science, and I’m excited to work with colleagues across the Institute to further integrate discovery, data, and translation in support of developing new approaches to treating complex brain disorders .”
The appointment of Dr. Martinowich is part of a broader expansion of LIBD’s executive leadership team, positioning the Institute to continue translating fundamental discoveries into insights with real-world relevance for individuals and families affected by schizophrenia, mood disorders, neurodevelopmental conditions, and neurodegenerative disease.
Dr. Keri Martinowich served as a Senior Investigator and Director of Translational Neuroscience at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development and a Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She received a B.A. from The George Washington University and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, Los Angeles, followed by postdoctoral training at the National Institute of Mental Health. Her research integrates molecular, cellular, systems, and computational neuroscience to study gene expression programs and circuit mechanisms underlying human brain disorders.
About the Lieber Institute for Brain Development
The mission of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development and the Maltz Research Laboratories is to translate the understanding of basic genetic and molecular mechanisms of schizophrenia and related developmental brain disorders into clinical advances that change the lives of affected individuals. LIBD is an independent, not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization and a Maryland tax-exempt medical research institute affiliated with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The Lieber Institute’s brain repository of nearly 5,000 human brains is the largest collection of postmortem brains for the study of neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide.
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Media Contact: Oluwaseyi Abujade, media@libd.org