Lee Michael Kaplan MD, PhD, Dipl. ABOM

Dr. Lee M. Kaplan, MD, Ph.D., is director of the Obesity, Metabolism & Nutrition Institute and founding director of the Weight Center at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the director of the subspecialty fellowship program in Obesity Medicine and Nutrition at MGH, Director of the NIH-sponsored Small Animal Metabolic Surgery Core Resource, associate director of the NIH-sponsored Boston-area Nutrition and Obesity Research Center, and Immediate Past Chair of the Campaign to End Obesity.

Dr. Kaplan graduated with honors from Harvard University. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. in molecular biology, both with distinction, from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He completed an internship and residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in gastroenterology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and a fellowship in genetics at the Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Dr. Kaplan's clinical expertise is in the areas of obesity medicine, gastroenterology, and liver disease. The author of more than 150 medical and scientific papers, he has a special interest in the causes and complications of obesity and the development of new and more effective preventive strategies and therapies for this problem. His clinical research is focused on identifying clinically relevant subtypes of obesity, identifying predictors of outcome of obesity therapies, and exploring novel, combination therapies for obesity and its complications. His basic research is focused on the physiological and molecular mechanisms of gastrointestinal regulation of body weight and metabolic function, and his group has pioneered the development and use of rodent models of weight loss surgery and gastrointestinal devices to explore these mechanisms.

Dr. Kaplan has participated in several obesity advisory panels, including as chair of the American Gastroenterology (AGA) obesity task force, the NIH Clinical Obesity Research Panel, member of the bariatric surgery clinical guidelines committees for the AGA and the Endocrine Society, member of and member of the Certification of Obesity Medicine Physicians (COMP) Steering Committee. Dr. Kaplan was director of the recent FDA workshop on Device development for Obesity and Metabolic Diseases. He currently serves as Vice-Chair of the Nutrition and Obesity Section of the AGA and Chair-elect of the Bariatric Surgery section of The Obesity Society.