BRI Leadership
Barbara E. Bierer, MD
Senior Vice President, Research
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Barbara E. Bierer, MD, a nationally known hematologist and immunologist, is Senior Vice President, Research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bierer is responsible for managing the hospital’s approximately $400 million research program, as well as overseeing the newly created Biomedical Research Institute in conjunction with senior research faculty. She was recruited to this position at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2003.
Prior to her appointment as Senior Vice President for Research, Dr. Bierer served as the Vice President for Patient Safety at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) and initiated the Center for Patient Safety at the DFCI where she served as its first Director. From 1997 to 2002, Dr. Bierer was appointed Chief of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Biology at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland. She served as the Director of Pediatric Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplantation at DFCI and the Children’s Hospital from 1993-1997. Her research laboratory has focused on basic mechanisms of immunity and its application to stem cell transplantation, interests that complement her clinical commitment to stem cell transplantation.
A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Dr. Bierer began her career at BWH as a Clinical and Research Fellow in Hematology and Medical Oncology in the Department of Medicine, following her internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Bierer earned her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and graduated magna cum laude with an undergraduate degree in Biology from Yale University.
In addition to her academic responsibilities, Dr. Bierer is the President of the Board of Directors of the Association for Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs, Inc. (AAHRPP), an association that offers accreditation to institutions that conduct or review research with human participants using a voluntary, peer-review, educational model. Additionally, Dr. Bierer is on the Board of Directors of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) and on the Medical and Scientific Advisory Board and the Board of Directors of ViaCell, Inc. She is an editor of Current Protocols in Immunology and the deputy editor of the Journal of Immunology and Blood and Bone Marrow Transplantation. She has served as a member of the Scholars Committee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and on the Admissions Committee of the Biomedical Research Training Program for Underrepresented Minorities at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, where she received the Director’s Award in 1999.
BWH currently ranks second nationally among independent teaching hospitals in research received by the National Institute of Health. Its 1,000 research fellows conduct clinical, basic and epidemiological research in a half-million square feet of laboratory space in the Longwood Medical area in Boston.
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