He received his MD and PhD from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, completed residency training at the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program, and did postdoctoral work at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where he identified novel genes that are important in the invasive and metastatic phenotype of pancreatic cancer. Kimmelman is an attending radiation oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital, specializing in gastrointestinal malignancies, and the director of preclinical therapeutics of the small animal microirradiator facility. Kimmelman is the recipient of the Ruth Leff Siegal Award from Columbia University for excellence in pancreatic cancer research.