UCSF’s innovative, collaborative approach to patient care, research and education spans disciplines across the life sciences, making it a world leader in scientific discovery and its translation to improving health.
Dr. Singer is an attending physician and Assistant Professor in Radiation Oncology at UCSF. She also serves as Clinical Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Director in Radiation Oncology and is board-certified in both radiation oncology and MRI safety. She received a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Francisco in 2010, focusing on breast MRI, and then her MD from the University of California, San Francisco in 2012.
My laboratory focuses on identification of therapeutic resistance mechanisms and novel treatment strategies for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). We have a particular emphasis on AML associated with mutations in Fms-like Tyrosine Kinase-3 (FLT3). FLT3 is mutated in ~30% of AML, with constitutively activating FLT3 internal tandem duplication (ITD) mutations conferring a poor prognosis.
Julie Ann Sosa, MD, MA, FACS, FSSO, is the Leon Goldman MD Distinguished Professor of Surgery and Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), where she is also a Professor in the Department of Medicine and affiliated faculty for the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. Dr. Sosa came to UCSF in 2018 from Duke. Her clinical interest is in endocrine surgery, with a focus in thyroid cancer.
Dr. Sundaram is a biomedical engineer, physician, and scientist with an interest in airway smooth muscle biology. Her laboratory focuses on tethering pathways used by muscle to transmit force. Through a more nuanced understanding of pathways that contribute to force transmission and the influence on pro-inflammatory cytokines on regulating these pathways, Dr. Sundaram hopes to identify novel drug targets to mitigate exaggerated airway narrowing in chronic airways diseases.
Dr. Jane Symington is a pediatric physician scientist investigating the pathogenesis of Coccidioides, the fungus that causes Coccidioidomycosis, more commonly known as Valley Fever. Her current work focuses on dissecting the interactions between Coccidioides and innate immune cells to identify and target pathways important for fungal virulence or protective host responses.
Our lab leverages cutting-edge machine learning and experimental genomics to map the gene regulatory networks disrupted in cardiovascular disease and discover network-correcting therapeutics. We develop machine learning models that leverage the unprecedented volume of transcriptomic and epigenomic data now available to gain a fundamental understanding of network dynamics that can be democratized to a vast array of downstream applications.
Dr. Doris Wang is a neurosurgeon who specializes in surgery for patients with movement disorders, such as essential tremor, Parkinson's disease and dystonia, a condition in which involuntarily contracting muscles cause abnormal movements.
My career goal is to broaden the understanding of central pain processing to develop targeted, novel therapeutics for specific headache syndromes. My experiences with patients who experience migraines prompted me to think more deeply about concepts of pain and central sensitization. Migraineurs have exquisite sensitivity to external stimuli, and headaches seem to be triggered by pain pathways that may have undergone maladaptive changes. Additionally, long-term acute medication use promotes the severity and frequency of migraines, which can become refractory to treatment.
My research focuses on understanding the role of Gs-protein coupled receptor signaling in skeletal development, with a focused interest in craniofacial fibrous dysplasia of the bone (FD) and McCune-Albright syndrome (MAS).
The unifying theme of my research is to understand the genetic mechanisms involved in the development and progression of melanocytic skin tumors and harness our understanding to improve melanoma treatment. I am well positioned to accomplish this goal since I am an expert dermatopathologist and a scientist with expertise in cancer genetics and bioinformatics. My efforts have been focused on identifying oncogenic drivers in melanocytic tumors, with the goal to identify and move new knowledge from the laboratory directly to patient care.
