University of California, San Francisco

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a center of health sciences research, patient care, and education; located in San Francisco, California. Though one of the ten campuses of the University of California, it is unique for being the only University of California campus dedicated solely to graduate education, and in health and biomedical sciences. Some of UCSF's treatment centers include kidney transplants and liver transplantation, radiology, neurosurgery, neurology, oncology, ophthalmology, gene therapy, women's health, fetal surgery, pediatrics, and internal medicine.

Founded in 1873, the mission of UCSF is to serve as a "public university dedicated to saving lives and improving health." The UCSF Medical Center is consistently ranked among the top 10 hospitals in the United States by U.S. News & World Report, who also ranked UCSF’s medical school specialty program in AIDS medical care first in the country.

UCSF is administered separately from Hastings College of Law, another UC institution located in San Francisco. In recent years, UCSF and UC Hastings have increased their collaboration, including the formation of the UCSF/Hastings Consortium on Law, Science, and Health Policy.

History
UCSF traces its history to Dr. Hugh H. Toland, a South Carolina surgeon who found great success and wealth after moving to San Francisco in 1852. A previous school, the Cooper Medical College of the University of Pacific (founded 1858), entered a period of uncertainty in 1862 when its founder, Dr. Elias Samuel Cooper, died. In 1864, Toland founded a new medical school, Toland Medical College, and the faculty of Cooper Medical College chose to suspend operations and join the new school.

The University of California was founded in 1868, and by 1870 Toland Medical School began negotiating an affiliation with the new public university. Meanwhile, some faculty of Toland Medical School elected to reopen the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, which would later become Stanford University School of Medicine. Negotiations between the Toland and the UC were complicated by Toland's demand that the medical school continue to bear his name, which he finally conceded. In March 1873, the trustees of Toland Medical College transferred it to the Regents of the University of California, and it became "The Medical Department of the University of California." On September 15, 1874, the school opened its doors to female students.

Campus
UCSF operates four major campus sites within the city of San Francisco and one in Fresno, California, as well as numerous other minor sites scattered through San Francisco and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Parnassus
Parnassus serves as the main campus and includes numerous research labs, the 600 bed UCSF Medical Center, Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, and UCSF Children's Hospital. The Schools of Dentistry, Pharmacy, Medicine, Nursing, and the Biomedical Sciences graduate program are also located at Parnassus. It also houses the UCSF neurology outpatient practice that serves as a referral center of most of Northern California and Reno, Nevada.

UCSF's Beckman Vision Center is also located at the Parnassus campus. It is a center for the diagnosis, treatment and research of all areas of eye care, including vision correction surgery.

Also located on the Parnassus campus is the UCSF Fetal Treatment Center, multidisciplinary care center dedicated to the diagnosis, treatment, and long-term follow-up of fetal birth defects.

Mission Bay
UCSF's Mission Bay Campus, also located in San Francisco, is the largest ongoing biomedical construction project in the world. The 43 acre Mission Bay campus, opened in 2003 with construction still ongoing, contains additional research space and facilities to foster biotechnology and life sciences companies. It will double the size of UCSF's research enterprise over the next 10 years. The biotechnology company Genentech contributed $50 million toward construction of a building as part of a settlement regarding alleged theft of UCSF technology several decades earlier. Also located on the Mission Bay campus, the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Hall was designed by César Pelli and opened in February 2004. The building is named in honor of Arthur Rock and his wife, who made a $25 million gift to the university. Byers Hall serves as the headquarters for the California Institute for Biomedical Research (QB3), a cooperative effort between the UC campuses at San Francisco, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz. The building is named after venture capitalist Brook Byers, co-chair of UCSF's capital campaign that concluded in 2005 and raised over $1.6 billion. Additionally, the William J. Rutter Center, designed along with the adjacent 600-space parking structure by Ricardo Legorreta, opened in October 2005 and contains a fitness and recreation center, swimming pools, student services, and conference facilities. The building is named in honor of William J. Rutter, former chairman of the university's Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics and co-founder of Chiron Corporation. A housing complex for 750 students and postdoctoral fellows and an 800-space parking garage also opened in late 2005. And a fourth research building, designed by Rafael Viñoly and named the Helen Diller Family Cancer Research Building, opened in June 2009. Two additional research buildings designated for neuroscience and cardiovascular research are currently in the planning and design phase. UCSF is also in the early stages of planning for a new specialty hospital focused on women, children, and cancer to be built at the Mission Bay campus and scheduled to open by the end of 2014.

Other
The Mount Zion campus contains UCSF's NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, its Women's Health Center, the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine and outpatient resources. The San Francisco General Hospital campus cares for the indigent population of San Francisco and contains San Francisco's only Level I trauma center. The hospital itself is owned and operated by the city of San Francisco, but many of its doctors carry UCSF affiliation and maintain research laboratories at the hospital campus. The earliest cases of HIV/AIDS were discovered at SF General Hospital in the 1980s. To this day SF General Hospital has the world's leading HIV/AIDS treatment and research center.

UCSF is also affiliated with the San Francisco VA Hospital and the J. David Gladstone Institutes, a private biomedical research entity that has recently moved to a new building adjacent to UCSF's Mission Bay campus. The headquarters of the new California Institute for Regenerative Medicine are also located nearby in the Mission Bay neighborhood.

Academics
University of California, San Francisco is unique in that it performs only biomedical and patient-centered research in its Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy, Nursing, and Dentistry, and the Graduate Division, and their hundreds of associated laboratories. The university is known for innovation in medical research, public service, and patient care. UCSF's faculty includes five Nobel Prize winners, 31 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 69 members of the Institute of Medicine, and 30 members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. UCSF confers a number of degrees, including Master of Science, Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Pharmacy, Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Dental Surgery, and Doctor of Physical Therapy in a variety of fields.

Rankings
In 2012, the Academic Ranking of World Universities, published annually by Shanghai Jiaotong University, ranked UCSF 2nd in the world for Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy and 3rd in the world for Life and Agricultural Sciences. The professional schools of the University of California, San Francisco are among the top in the nation, according to current (2012) US News and World Report graduate school and other rankings. The schools also rank at or near the top in research funding from the National Institutes of Health. In addition, the UCSF Medical Center in 2011 was ranked by US News and World Report the 7th-best hospital in the nation, making it the highest-ranked medical center in northern California.

School of Medicine
In 2012, the school of medicine ranked 5th overall among research-based medical schools by U.S. News & World Report. In rankings of medical schools for primary care, UCSF ranked 3rd. It is the only medical school in the nation to be ranked in the top 5 in both the research and primary care categories. In addition, the magazine ranked UCSF in the top 10 in seven of the eight medical school specialty programs assessed, including first in AIDS medical care, second in women's health, third in family medicine, and third in internal medicine. The UCSF drug and alcohol abuse specialty ranks sixth nationally, while geriatrics ranks ninth, and pediatrics tenth.

In 2011, the School of Medicine was the second largest recipient of National Institutes of Health research funds among all US medical schools, and the first among all public medical schools, receiving awards totaling $532.8 million. This figure rose from 2010 when the School of Medicine received a total of $475.4 million in NIH funds, but was still the largest public medical school recipient.

Biological Sciences, PhD Programs
U.S. News & World Report in 2012 ranked UCSF seventh best overall. In that survey, UCSF ranked second in immunology, third in neuroscience, fourth in cell biology, and microbiology, fifth in biochemistry/biophysics/structural biology, sixth in molecular biology, and eighth in genetics/genomics/bioinformatics.

School of Nursing
In 2012, U.S. News & World Report ranked the UCSF graduate programs in nursing as fourth in the nation. UCSF ranked in the top 10 in all seven of the rated nursing specialties, including first for adult/medical-surgical nurse, family nurse practitioner and psychiatric/mental health nurse programs, and second for its adult nurse practitioner program. The community/public health nursing program ranked fourth, while the pediatric nurse practitioner and the gerontology/geriatrics practitioner specialties ranked eighth nationally.

The School of Nursing in 2007 ranked first nationally in total NIH research funds with $13.8 million.

School of Pharmacy
In 2012, US News and World Report ranked the UCSF School of Pharmacy number one in its "America's Best Graduate Schools" edition. In 2010, the School of Pharmacy also ranked first in NIH research funding among all US pharmacy schools, receiving awards totaling $19.6 million.

The UCSF School of Pharmacy was also ranked as the top program in the US, according to a 2002 survey published in The Annals of Pharmacotherapy, which weighed key criteria, including funding for research and the frequency of scientific publications by faculty, that are not considered in other rankings.

School of Dentistry
The School of Dentistry in 2007 ranked first among all dental schools in NIH research funding. It received awards totaling $18.3 million from the NIH.

In 2011, the School of Dentistry ranked first again in NIH research funding, this time receiving $19.5 million. (sources: http://report.nih.gov/award/trends/FindOrg.cfm http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2011/02/9393/ucsf-tops-public-institutions-nih-funding-ranks-third-overall )

UCSF Medical Center
In 2011, US News and World Report named the UCSF Medical Center the seventh-best hospital in the nation, making it the highest-ranked medical center in Northern California. Among pediatric care centers, UCSF Children's Hospital ranked no. 16 – among the highest-rated children's medical service in California.

In the magazine's "America's Best Hospitals" survey, the UCSF Medical Center ranked best in Northern California – as well as among the best in the nation – in the following specialties: endocrinology, neurology/neurosurgery; gynecology; cancer; kidney disease; ophthalmology; respiratory disorders; rheumatology; urology; digestive disorders; ear, nose, and throat; psychiatry; heart and heart surgery; and pediatrics.

In San Francisco Magazine's 2003 survey of the "Best Doctors" in the Bay Area, 55 percent of those honored were UCSF faculty.

UCSF Radiology and BioMedical Imaging Center
UCSF Radiology research programs were ranked second in 2009 in America. The Radiology department is spearheaded by Dr Ronald L. Arenson who is an Alexander R. Margulis Distinguished Professor and also a part of Board of directors of RSNA(Radiological Society of North America).

Distinctions

 * First to discover that normal cellular genes can be converted to cancer genes (Nobel Prize in Medicine, J. Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus, 1989)
 * First to discover (together with Stanford) the techniques of recombinant DNA, the seminal step in the creation of the biotechnology industry
 * First to discover the precise recombinant DNA techniques that led to the creation of a hepatitis B vaccine
 * First to perform a successful in-utero fetal surgery (Michael R. Harrison)
 * First to clone an insulin gene into bacteria, leading to the mass production of recombinant human insulin to treat diabetes
 * First to synthesize human growth hormone and clone into bacteria, setting the stage for genetically engineered human growth hormone
 * First to develop prenatal tests for sickle cell anemia and thalassemia
 * First to train pharmacists as drug therapy specialists
 * First to establish special care units for AIDS patients and among the first to identify HIV as the causative agent of the disease
 * First to discover prions, a unique type of infectious agent responsible for a variety of neurodegenerative diseases (Nobel Prize in Medicine, Stanley B. Prusiner, 1997)
 * First to develop catheter ablation therapy for tachycardia, which cures "racing" hearts without surgery
 * First university west of the Mississippi to offer a doctoral degree in nursing
 * First to discover that missing pulmonary surfactants are the culprit in the death of newborns with respiratory distress syndrome; first to develop a synthetic substitute for it, reducing infant death rates significantly
 * First to develop an academic hospitalist program (and coined the term "hospitalist") (Robert M. Wachter); the field is the fastest growing specialty in modern medical history
 * With a work force of 18,600 people and annual economic impact of $2 billion, UCSF is San Francisco's second largest employer
 * UCSF has its own fully functional police department, which carries out policing duties for its two major campuses as well as all satellite sites within the city and in South San Francisco.
 * UCSF is home to the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, an internationally recognized digital library of previously-secret internal tobacco industry documents. The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL) contains more than 11 million documents created by major tobacco companies related to their advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and scientific research activities.

Noted alumni/faculty

 * Shuvo Roy, Inventor of Artificial kidney
 * Andy Baldwin – bachelor for the tenth season of The Bachelor
 * J. Michael Bishop – former UCSF Chancellor. Nobel laureate in Medicine (1989), worked to discover the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes
 * Elizabeth Blackburn, professor of biology and physiology at UCSF, Nobel laureate in Medicine (2009), discoverer of the ribonucleoprotein enzyme, telomerase. Appointed a member of the President's Council on Bioethics in 2001 and fired in February 2004, reportedly for her public disagreements and political differences with Council chair Leon Kass and the Bush Administration, particularly on the issue of therapeutic cloning.
 * Richard Carmona – former Surgeon General of the United States
 * Priscilla Chan - pediatrician, spouse of Facebook CEO
 * John Clements, first to isolate surfactant and to develop it artificially
 * Haile T. Debas, former UCSF Chancellor; former Dean, School of Medicine; founding Executive Director, Department of Global Health Sciences
 * Michael V. Drake – University of California, Irvine Chancellor; former University of California Vice President-Health Affairs
 * Paul Ekman, who showed that human emotional expressions were universal and developed the Facial Action Coding System
 * Richard Feachem, founding Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (2002–2007)
 * Julie Gerberding – Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
 * Stanton Glantz, regarded as the Ralph Nader of the anti-big-tobacco movement
 * Michael R. Harrison – developed the initial techniques for fetal surgery and performed the first fetal surgery in 1981, and then went on to establish the UCSF Fetal Treatment Center, which was the first of its kind in the United States.
 * Julien Hoffman – professor emeritus of pediatrics; senior member of the Cardiovascular Research Institute
 * Dorothy M. Horstmann (1911–2001), virologist who made important discoveries about polio.
 * David Kessler – former dean of the UCSF School of Medicine and Yale University School of Medicine, and former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration in the Clinton Administration
 * Peter Kollman – developer of the AMBER force field in molecular dynamics simulation and an internationally renowned computational chemist
 * Herbert Daniel Landahl, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Biophysics and Mathematical Biology-Basic research in mathematical biophysics of the central nervous system, cell division dynamics, population interactions, and control of insulin bioynthesis.
 * Arthur Lander, M.D. PhD Developmental biologist at University of California, Irvine
 * Jay Levy, who, along with Robert Gallo at the National Cancer Institute and Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute, was among the first to identify and isolate HIV as the causative agent in AIDS
 * C. Cameron Macauley, photographer and film producer
 * Michael Merzenich -Professor emeritus neuroscientist -Brain plasticity research, Basic and clinical sciences of hearing pioneer- CEO Scientific Learning, Posit Science
 * Rita Ng – Miss California 2000, 2nd runner up
 * Thomas Novotny, former Assistant Surgeon General
 * Dean Ornish, who first established that coronary artery disease could be reversed with lifestyle changes alone, author of the few bestseller books on the subject of healthy lifestyle choices
 * William W. Parmley - Former Editor of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and General Authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
 * Stanley Prusiner – Nobel laureate in Medicine (1997), discovered and described prions
 * Steve Schroeder – Former CEO, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
 * Phillip Thygesson - ophthalmologist, trachoma researcher, Thygesson Disease.
 * Harold Varmus – Nobel laureate in Medicine (1989), worked with J. Michael Bishop to discover the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes. Also served as director of the National Institutes of Health during the Clinton Administration, as president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center from 2000 to 2010, and currently as the director of the National Cancer Institute.
 * Paul Volberding, whose pioneering work in the early days of the AIDS pandemic was noted in Randy Shilts' book And the Band Played On
 * Robert M. Wachter, a prominent expert in patient safety, who coined the term hospitalist and is considered the academic leader of the field of hospital medicine.
 * David A. Wood former head of the Cancer Research Institute and former president of the American Cancer Society.
 * Jere E Goyan – former Dean of the School of Pharmacy, former FDA Commissioner (during the Carter Administration)
 * Pablo DT Valenzuela – co-founder of the American biotech company Chiron Corporation, the first Chilean biotech company Bios Chile, and of Fundacion Ciencia para la Vida in Santiago Chile.
 * Shinya Yamanaka, an investigator at the Gladstone Institutes and a professor of anatomy at UCSF, won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of how to transform ordinary adult skin cells into cells that are capable of developing into any cell in the human body.