Bill Martin leads the Neuroscience therapeutic area of Janssen Research & Development, LLC in discovering and developing important new therapies for people living with brain disorders. His role is focused on addressing areas where the greatest unmet needs in neuroscience remain, and where the biggest impacts can be made for patients and society, including serious mental illness (such as treatment-resistant depression and schizophrenia) and neurodegenerative disorders (such as Alzheimer’s disease).
Prior to joining Janssen R&D, Martin co-founded Blackthorn Therapeutics, where he first served as the company’s Chief Scientific Officer and Head of R&D before becoming President and Chief Executive Officer. Blackthorn integrates computational and clinical neuroscience and applies a precision medicine approach to creating novel therapeutics for central nervous system (CNS) disorders. Before Blackthorn, Martin held leadership positions at Theravance Biopharma. He started his career at Merck, contributing to the company’s Neuroscience franchise.
Martin is also a member of the Board of Directors for Brown University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science and has held leadership positions in the Society for Neuroscience, the Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, the American Physiological Society and the International Brain Research Organization. He has published extensively on neuroscience and brain disorders, with more than 75 publications in scientific journals.
Martin received a bachelor’s in Psychology from Swarthmore College and a doctorate in Experimental Psychology from Brown University. He conducted postdoctoral research at the Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco.
