About Us

The Institute for Human Genetics, an Organized Research Unit (ORU) in the School of Medicine, is a focal point on the UCSF campus for faculty who share an interest in human genetics. The Institute is comprised of over 80 core faculty members from all four schools (Medicine, Pharmacy, Dentistry, Nursing). Our administrative unit, based in Parnassus, serves the daily administration requirements of 12 research laboratories.

The institute was initially a Center in 2005, receiving ORU status in 2007, at which point we officially changed our name to the Institute for Human Genetics. Its inaugural director was Neil J Risch, PhD which served as director from 2005-2020, followed by Ophir Klein, MD, PhD. From 2022, Nadav Ahituv, PhD served as the interim director and now in 2023, accepted the role as director.

The Institute provides a hub for genetics/genomics research, technologies, industry partnerships, training and education at UCSF.

State of the art technology ranging from DNA Extraction, genotyping and sequencing to data analysis is available to the campus through our Genomics Core Facility.

The Institute is governed by an Executive Committee that includes:

Nadav Ahituv (Director)
David Erle
Ryan Hernandez
Mary Norton
Louis Ptáček
Aleks Rajkovic
Yin Shen
Joyce So
Matthew State
Arnetha Whitmore
Jimmie Ye