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Dr. Baron, who has polycystic kidney disease, was the Chief Scientific Officer of the PKD Foundation 2015-19. Dr. David Baron received his B.A. (Biology) and Ph.D. (Anatomy) from The University of Chicago. Following his postdoctoral fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina, Dr. Baron founded the Core Structure-Function Laboratory in the Department of Pharmacology with NIH funding and joined the faculty with a joint appointment in the Departments of Pharmacology, and Anatomy and Cell Biology. He later joined Searle Pharmaceuticals as a Research Scientist, later becoming a Monsanto, then Pharmacia Senior Science Fellow.

Dr. Baron became the first Director of Toxicology at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, U.S., rising to Vice President, Nonclinical Safety Evaluation, for the U.S. and Europe. He has been a reviewer for the NCI, given numerous invited seminars, and has served on several national scientific boards (International Consortium for Innovation and Quality in Pharmaceutical Development -IQ; International Serious Adverse Event Consortium -iSAEC).

During the course of his career he has focused on the structural correlates of epithelial electrolyte and water transport, and the nonclinical safety and pharmacology of pioglitazone, a type 2 diabetes drug, now in a pilot clinical trial for the treatment of PKD supported by the PKD Foundation and the FDA. Most recently, he has worked to establish a patient centered PKD Registry and to define potential surrogate endpoints in clinical trials of new therapeutics for the treatment of PKD.