Bill Martin is the Global Focus Area Head, Neuroscience, and is a member of the company’s Group Operating Committee. He leads a dedicated team focused on the discovery and development of a precision neuroscience pipeline of transformative treatments for individuals grappling with serious neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. Building on Johnson & Johnson’s nearly seven-decade legacy in neuroscience, Bill’s team is driving a differentiated portfolio of new and innovative therapies, each targeting a subpopulation of patients.
Before joining Johnson & Johnson, Bill co-founded and served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Blackthorn Therapeutics, acquired by Neumora Therapeutics in 2020. Blackthorn, under his leadership, blended computational and clinical neuroscience, employing a precision medicine approach to develop innovative therapeutics for central nervous system (CNS) disorders. He also held positions as Chief Scientific Officer and Head of R&D at Blackthorn.
Before Blackthorn, Bill held multiple leadership positions at Theravance Biopharma, including leading the company’s research portfolio planning initiative and serving as a member of the strategic partnership team and project team leader for an advanced clinical stage CNS program. He began his career at Merck, where he contributed to the strategic direction of the company’s Neuroscience franchise.
Bill actively engages in the academic and scientific community. He is a member of the Advisory Council for Brown University’s Carney Institute for Brain Sciences and the Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders within the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. He was a founding Board member of The Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare. Additionally, he has held leadership positions in prominent organizations such as the Society for Neuroscience. Bill is a prolific author, with more than 80 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.
Bill earned his bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Swarthmore College and completed his doctorate in Experimental Psychology at Brown University. He conducted postdoctoral research at the Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco.