Organization & Leadership

Organization and Leadership
Rudi Schmid, Founder of the UCSF Liver Center

 

Center Leadership | External Advisory Board
Internal Executive Committee | Liver Center Organizational Chart

Center Leadership
Program Director
Co-Director - Liver Cell Isolation, Analysis & Immunology Core

Jacquelyn J. Maher, MD
Dr. Maher is a Professor of Medicine at UCSF and Chief of the GI Division at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. She has been a member of the Liver Center since 1988. Her research focuses on fatty liver disease and mechanisms of liver cell toxicity.  She has been Director of the UCSF Liver Center since 2007.

 

Associate Director
Director - Enrichment Program and Pilot-Feasibility Program

Holger F. Willenbring, MD, PhD
Dr. Willenbring is a Professor of Surgery and a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research. He has been a member of the Liver Center since 2005. His research interests include liver regeneration and liver cell transplantation, mechanisms of hepatocarcinogenesis, and approaches to the treatment and reversal of liver fibrosis.

 

 

Director - Patient-Facing Research Core
Jennifer Lai, MD 
Dr. Lai is a Professor of Medicine and Director of Clinical Hepatology Research at UCSF Health. She has been a member of the Liver Center since 2012. Her primary research interest is in the assessment of frailty as a predictor of liver transplant outcome, and the reversal of frailty as a management strategy for patients with cirrhosis.

 

Co-Director - Liver Cell Isolation, Analysis & Immunology Core

Jody L. Baron, MD, PhD
Dr. Baron is a Professor of Medicine and a member of the UCSF Molecular Medicine Program. She has been a member of the Liver Center since 1999. Dr. Baron is expert in flow cytometry and molecular analysis; her research program focuses on immune responses to hepatitis virus infection. She has been a Core Director since 2008 and has been instrumental in developing methods for isolation and analysis of cell populations from human liver.  

 

 

Co-Director - Liver Tissue Analysis Core

James P. Grenert, MD, PhD
Dr. Grenert is a Professor of Pathology at UCSF and Director of the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory. He is skilled in the development and validation of histologic techniques to detect chromosomal abnormalities in solid tumors. Dr. Grenert's research interest is in the development of histologic methods to improve diagnostic and prognostic accuracy for hepatic malignancies. He has been a Core Director since 2009.  

 

Co-Director - Liver Tissue Analysis Core

Aras Mattis, MD, PhD
Dr. Mattis is an Assistant Professor of Pathology who specializes in mouse and human liver pathology. He has been a member of the Liver Center since 2013. His personal research focuses on the use of patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells for the study of human liver diseases. He is a valued consultant for histology interpretation and serves as the primary liaison for liver tissue procurement by the Liver Center.

 

Director - Liver Gene Analysis Core

Bruce Wang, MD
Dr. Wang is an Assistant Professor of Medicine with a strong background in single-cell transcriptomic analysis of liver cells. He has been a member of the Liver Center since 2015. His personal research interest is in heterogeneity of hepatocyte gene expression under several conditions such as spatial variation across the hepatic lobule, variation based on sex, and variation induced by acute and chronic disease states.    

 

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Internal Advisory Board

Mark Anderson, MD, PhD
Dr. Anderson is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the Diabetes Center at UCSF. The main research interest of his research laboratory is to examine the genetic control of autoimmune diseases to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms by which immune tolerance is broken. A major focus of his lab is a human autoimmune syndrome called Autoimmune Polyglandular Syndrome Type 1 (APS1 or APECED), which is classically manifested by an autoimmune attack directed at multiple endocrine organs.

David Erle, MD
Dr. Erle is a Professor of Medicine and Pulmonary Diseases whose research is intended to reach a deeper understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying airway epithelial dysfunction in asthma. He is an expert in functional genomics, and since 2019 has been Director of the UCSF CoLabs. He has been instrumental in enabling the Liver Center to leverage university core facilities for the benefit of Center members.

Sandy Feng, MD, PhD
Dr. Feng is a Professor and Vice-Chair for Research in the Department of Surgery. She is an abdominal transplant surgeon whose research focus is on transplant tolerance. She has led several multicenter clinical trials to study tolerance and work toward immunosuppression withdrawal in adult and pediatric liver transplant recipients. Before taking her position as Vice-Chair of Research, she was a member of the Liver Center where she co-directed a core focusing on clinical research support.   

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External Advisory Board

Scott L. Friedman, MD
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY

Dr. Friedman is the Dean for Therapeutic Discovery and Chief of the Division of Liver Diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His research focuses on the pathogenesis and treatment of liver fibrosis. Dr. Friedman began his research career at UCSF, where he identified hepatic stellate cells as the principal effectors of liver fibrosis. In his current role at Mount Sinai, he seeks to accelerate discovery and translate scientific advances into new treatments for human disease. Dr. Friedman has participated in center programs at NIDDK and NIAAA and currently leads a program on liver cancer funded by NCI.

 

 

Tatiana Kisseleva, MD
University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA

Dr. Kisseleva is an Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on the heterogeneity of myofibroblasts in the liver, their diverse origin and properties, and their ability to change phenotype in settings of  liver injury and repair. Her expertise extends to immune regulation of myofibroblasts in multile clinical scenarios including alcohol-associated, toxic and cholestatic liver disease. She studies liver disease in rodents and humans, and has broad experience isolating and culturing individual liver cell populations from intact organs from both species. She is Co-Director of the Pre-Clinical Models Core of the DDRCC at UCSD.

Rebecca G. Wells, MD
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Dr. Wells is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is an expert on tissue mechanics and their impact of cell and organ biology: she has made seminal discoveries regarding how stiffening of the liver predates fibrosis and facilitates the deposition of abnormal extracellular matrix in the diseased liver. Her group is part of the Center for Engineering Mechanobiology (CEMB), a 7-institution organization with the goal of developing a research and educational program integrating concepts in the physical sciences, engineering, and biology. She is an Associate Director of the DDRCC at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Internal Executive Committee
Jacquelyn Maher - Program Director James Grenert - Core Director
Holger Willenbring - Associate Director Aras Mattis - Core Director
Jennifer Lai - Assistant Director Bruce Wang - Core Director
Jody Baron - Core Director Sandhya Adiyodi Veetil - Program Manager

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