Profile

Robert L. Nussbaum, MD

Chief and Professor of Medicine

Bio

Dr. Nussbaum is the Holly Smith Professor of Medicine at UCSF, Chief of the Division of Genomic Medicine, and helps lead both the Cancer Risk Program at the Helen Diller Family Cancer Center and the UCSF Program in Cardiovascular Genetics. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the UCSF Institute for Human Genetics and directs the recently formed Genomic Medicine Initiative at UCSF. He came to UCSF in 2006 from the Division of Intramural Research of the National Human Genome Research Institute where he served for 12 years as Chief of the Genetic Diseases Research and Inherited Disease Research Branches. His research accomplishments include identification of mutations in α-synuclein, the first gene shown to cause a familial form of Parkinson disease, and positional cloning and characterization of the gene mutated in Lowe syndrome. He is the co-author of over 180 peer-reviewed publications in human genetics and lead author of a popular textbook of human genetics, Thompson and Thompson's Genetics in Medicine. Dr. Nussbaum has been on the Board of Directors of the American College of Medical Genetics and the American Society of Human Genetics, for which he also served as President. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2004.