Lee M. Kaplan, MD, PhD, is Director of the MGH Weight Center and the Obesity Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the Director of the Fellowship Program in Obesity Medicine and Nutrition at MGH, the first subspecialty training program in this area; Director of the NIH-sponsored Small Animal Metabolic Surgery Core Resource, Associate Director of the NIH-sponsored Boston-area Nutrition and Obesity Research Center; a member of the NIH Clinical Obesity Research Panel; and Chairman of the Board of the Campaign to End Obesity.

Dr. Kaplan graduated with honors from Harvard University. He received his MD and PhD 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 and exploring novel, combinatorial approaches to the treatment of 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 issues.

Dr. Kaplan has participated in several obesity advisory panels, including as chair of the American Gastroenterology (AGA) obesity task force, member of the bariatric surgery clinical guidelines committees for the AGA and the Endocrine Society, and member of the Obesity Medicine Certification Steering Committee. Dr. Kaplan was a co-director of the Diabetes Surgery Summit in 2007 and is a founding member of the International Diabetes Surgery Task Force. He lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts with his wife, Elizabeth, and children, Katharine, Benjamin and Caroline.