Executive Vice President, Head of Research & Development,
Biogen
Michael Ehlers, PhD is Executive Vice President, Head of Research & Development of Biogen. Previously, Ehlers was Senior Vice President & Head, BioTherapeutics R&D and the Chief Scientific Officer, Neuroscience & Pain at Pfizer. Prior to joining Pfizer in 2010, Dr. Ehlers was the George Barth Geller Professor of Neurobiology and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Duke University Medical Center.
Ehlers grew up rural Nebraska and earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. He holds MD and PhD degrees from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he pioneered studies on neuronal organelles and the trafficking of neurotransmitter receptors. Ehlers’ current research focuses on the interface between neuronal cell biology, the plasticity of neural circuits, and neuropsychiatric disease. He has led teams that have brought two compounds into phase 2 and three compounds into phase 1 studies in Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.
He is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2003 Eppendorf & Science Prize in Neurobiology, the 2007 John J. Abel Award in Pharmacology, the 2007 Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award, and the 2009 National Alliance for Schizophrenia and Depression Distinguished Investigator Award. He received the 2008 Breakthrough Research Award of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center given to a single scientist in North Carolina. Ehlers has authored over 80 scientific papers, served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Neuroscience, the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience, and sat on advisory committees of the National Institutes of Health. He serves on the scientific advisory boards of several private foundations and has advised major pharmaceutical and biotech companies.