Neal Baer, MD

Dr. Neal Baer is an award-winning showrunner, television writer/producer, physician and author. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, he lectures around the world on public health advocacy. Dr. Baer served as executive producer and showrunner of Designated Survivor and as the executive producer of Baking Impossible, both on Netflix. He is also an executive producer of the new HBO documentary, Welcome to Chechnya, which won a Special Jury Award at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, a Peabody Award and was shortlisted for an Oscar for Best Documentary and Best Visual Effects. 

Prior to Designated Survivor, Dr. Baer was executive producer and showrunner for the CBS television series Under the Dome. Previously, he was the executive producer and showrunner of the hit NBC television series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit from 2000-2011, where he oversaw all aspects of producing and writing the show. During his tenure on SVU, he received the Shine Award, a People’s Choice Award, the Prism Award, an Edgar Award, Sentinel for Health Award and the Media Access Award. Actors on the show were awarded six Emmys and a Golden Globe. 

Dr. Baer was also executive producer of the groundbreaking NBC hit series ER. A member of the show’s original writing staff and a producer on the series for seven seasons, he was nominated for five Emmy Awards as a producer. He also received Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series for the episodes Hell and High Water and Whose Appy Now?, for which he also received a Writers Guild of America nomination. 

Dr. Baer is a lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health. He serves on the Board of Fellows at Harvard Medical School. He is the editor of Reshaping Human Nature: The Promise and Peril of CRISPR, a collection of essays exploring the moral and ethical challenges posed by CRISPR technology, which will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2023.