The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center announced that Eyal Gottlieb, Ph.D., has been named the institution’s vice president for Research. Gottlieb, an accomplished scientist and leader will join MD Anderson in January to uphold and expand the institution’s research excellence.
In this role, Gottlieb will oversee laboratory science departments leading innovative discovery and translational research across a variety of disciplines. He will work closely with Chief Scientific Officer Giulio Draetta, M.D., Ph.D., and with others across MD Anderson to implement the scientific research strategy for the institution. He will also provide leadership to ensure research integrity across all areas and to lead scientific recruitment efforts, emphasizing attracting top-tier scientists from diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise.
“We enthusiastically welcome Dr. Gottlieb to the MD Anderson research community, and we look forward to his leadership as we continue to conduct the best science possible in pursuit of our mission to end cancer,” Draetta said. “Eyal is a tremendous scientist and a leader who exemplifies our core values, and I am confident his collaborative efforts will guide us toward an exciting future.”
Gottlieb received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago. He was a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Special Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. He started his independent research career at Cancer Research UK’s Beatson Institute in Glasgow, Scotland, where he established and directed the Cancer Metabolism Research Unit.
In 2016, he was appointed the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Chair of Cancer Research at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Since 2020, Gottlieb has served as director of the Rappaport Institute for Biomedical Research and vice dean of Research for the Technion Faculty of Medicine.
In his research, Gottlieb uses interdisciplinary methods that combine molecular and cellular biology, genetics, and analytical chemistry to investigate metabolic roles in diseases and find new clinical approaches. Among his key accomplishments are the identification of onco-metabolic signaling pathways and the elucidation of adaptations to stressful environments, and to the loss of the tumor suppressors fumarate hydratase and succinate dehydrogenase.