David Brenner, M.D.

An executive officer from a UC with a medical school
Appointed by UCSD Chancellor

David Brenner, M.D., a distinguished physician-scientist who began his academic career at UC San Diego, is Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences and Dean of the School of Medicine at UC San Diego. Brenner leads the UC San Diego School of Medicine, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, UCSD Medical Center and UCSD Medical Group. He has oversight of over 900 health sciences faculty physicians, pharmacists and scientists; 7,500 staff; more than 600 medical and pharmacy students; and a health system that cares for approximately 125,000 patients
annually.

Brenner is a leader in the field of gastroenterological research, specializing in diseases of the liver. He is widely known and respected as a translational scientist whose work bridges the laboratory and the clinical setting. He has focused on understanding the molecular pathogenesis of fibrotic liver disease and the genetic basis of liver disorders as the foundation for improving prevention and treatment of diseases of this organ. He is also recognized as an outstanding clinician and teacher.

For five years he was Editor-in-Chief of Gastroenterology, the premier journal in the field. After earning his M.D. from the Yale University School of Medicine and completing his residency at Yale-New Haven Medical Center, Brenner was a research associate in the Genetics and Biochemistry Branch of the National Institute of Arthritis, Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. He first came to UC San Diego in 1985 on a fellowship in gastroenterology, later joining the faculty of UC San Diego School of Medicine, and serving as a physician at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System. He became a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences and a Clinical Investigator in the VA system. He left UC San Diego in 1992 to become Professor and Chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he continued to earn accolades for his patient care and research contributions. Brenner became the Samuel Bard Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Physician-in-Chief of New York Presbyterian Hospital/ Columbia in 2003.

Brenner’s professional associations include the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, which he was president 2011- 2012, the American College of Physicians, the American Gastroenterological Association, the American Clinical and Climatological Association, and the Institute of Medicine. He is also on the board of directors of two philanthropic foundations, the AlphaOne Foundation and the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation.

Alternate Member

Dr. Kirk L. Peterson
Director, Sulpizio Family Cardiovascular Center
University of California, San Diego

Dr. Kirk L. Peterson has been with the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine for more than forty years, having fist come to this campus in 1970 to work as a research cardiologist.  Dr. Peterson is today a Professor of Medicine and currently serves as the Deputy Dean, UC San Diego School of Medicine.  He is also Director Emeritus of the Sulpizio Family Cardiovascular Center, UC San Diego Health Systems.  He continues to direct the Seaweed Canyon Physiology Laboratory, a major research facility within the Cardiovascular Division that also functions as a vital core unit for a number of grants funded by the National Institutes of Health.  Between 1989 and 2010, Dr. Peterson held the Edith and William Perlman Chair of Clinical Cardiology within the Department of Medicine.

Before coming to UCSD, Dr. Peterson received in 1960 a Bachelor of Science degree from Stanford University and in 1963 his Doctor of Medicine degree from the Cornell University Medical College.  He remained at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center where he functioned as an intern and resident within the Department of Medicine.  Thereafter, he completed a Clinical Fellowship in Cardiovascular Medicine at the Baylor University College of Medicine in Houston.  During the Vietnam War, Dr. Peterson served in the United States Air Force Medical Corps with the rank of major and assigned as Chief of Cardiopulmonary Medicine at the Wright-Patterson Air force Base, Dayton, Ohio.  While at UCSD, Dr. Peterson has served on the editorial board for the Journal American College of Cardiology and also exercised the role of President of the Medical Education Research Foundation within the UCSD Department of Medicine.  At one juncture in his career, he was a member of the Board of Directors of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., a preeminent publishing house of the era.

Dr. Peterson’s clinical research interests have focused on muscle mechanics, cardiac hemodynamics and pathophysiology, and heart imaging.  During his career he has authored over 120 original and 50 review articles and book chapters within these disciplines.  In 1997, he published a multi-authored text on cardiac catheterization and angiography, culminating twenty-five years as Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and six subsequent years as the Chief, Cardiac Section, at the UCSD Medical Center, Hillcrest.  Dr. Peterson and his collaborators have been pioneers in developing new approaches to the study of rodent cardiovascular physiology, allowing characterization of the effect of genetic mutations on cardiac function.