Daniel R. Weinberger

Daniel R. Weinberger, M.D., became director and CEO of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development in the summer of 2011 after leaving the National Institute of Mental Health, where he was head of the Genes, Cognition and Psychosis Program. He is regarded worldwide as perhaps the pre-eminent scientist in schizophrenia research, having been at the forefront of scientific investigation of this illness and related disorders for a generation.

Weinberger was instrumental in focusing research on the role of abnormal brain development as a risk factor for schizophrenia. His lab identified the first specific genetic mechanism of risk for schizophrenia, and the first genetic effects that account for variation in specific human cognitive functions and in human temperament.

In 2003, Science magazine highlighted his lab’s genetic research as the second-biggest scientific breakthrough of the year, second to the discovery of the origins of the cosmos. Weinberger’s many honors include the K.J. Zulch Neuroscience Prize of the Max Planck Society and election to the Institute of Medicine. Board certified in psychiatry and neurology, he attended college at the Johns Hopkins University and medical school at the University of Pennsylvania and served residencies in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and in neurology at George Washington University.