He received his bachelor's degree in chemical and physical biology from Harvard University and his PhD from Stanford University in 2014. There, he worked under K. Christopher Garcia, and studied the molecular mechanisms of T cell receptor recognition, cross-reactivity, and activation. After postdoctoral work in Carla Shatz’s group at Stanford supported by a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellowship, Professor Birnbaum joined MIT and the Koch Institute in 2016. During his tenure at the Koch Institute, Birnbaum has received the AACR-TESARO Career Development Award for Immuno-oncology Research, a Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering, and a V Scholar Grant from the Jimmy V Foundation.