Jay Schnitzer, MD, Ph.D.

Jay Schnitzer is senior vice president, corporate chief engineer, and chief medical officer at MITRE. In this role, he assures MITRE-wide technical quality and mission impact, delivers rigor to our network of chief engineers, and supports corporate strategy development and execution. He also leads corporate and national initiatives in health and life sciences, building coalitions leveraging the best talent across the nation in these communities.

Previously, as chief technology officer (CTO), Schnitzer led MITRE’s independent research and development program. Prior to his CTO role, Schnitzer was the director of biomedical sciences, leading the organization’s health transformation R&D program. In that capacity, he identified opportunities for MITRE to make important, transformative, and impactful differences in healthcare for our sponsors and the nation. As part of this work, he led the writing and editing of the Integrated Report for the Independent Assessment performed in response to Section 201 of the Veterans Choice Act and organized and facilitated the Blue-Ribbon Panel. To support the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) decision on its electronic health record (EHR) system, he facilitated a special listening forum for the VA Secretary in August 2017, at which industry experts on EHR implementation discussed leading practices. In January 2018, he organized a panel of EHR interoperability experts, which produced a report containing recommendations as input for the VA’s contract with a commercial EHR vendor.

Before joining MITRE, Schnitzer was the director of the Defense Sciences Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, where he led a team of 20 program managers and 70 support staff overseeing R&D across multiple domains. In addition to life sciences, biomedical research, and quantum physics, these R&D areas included materials science, advanced mathematics, and engineering. 

Formerly, Schnitzer was chief medical officer and senior vice president at Boston Scientific Corporation (BSC). His responsibilities included medical and clinical oversight of the entire product lifecycle for all medical devices manufactured by four business divisions of the company: endoscopy, urology/women’s health, neurovascular, and neuromodulation.

Prior to BSC, Schnitzer was on staff at Massachusetts General Hospital as an attending pediatric surgeon, with a joint appointment at the Shriners Hospital for Children burn center and a faculty position at Harvard Medical School.

In 2023, Schnitzer was named to the Federal Computer World list of Fed100, for going above and beyond in support of federal IT over the past year. In 2020, WashingtonExec named Schnitzer its 2020 Healthcare Industry Executive of the Year, in recognition of his work on the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition and his leadership of the MITRE independent R&D program. That award recognizes executives fostering innovation for the federal government.

Schnitzer received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from MIT, and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He is board certified and re-certified in surgery and pediatric surgery.