A. Eugene Washington, M.D., M.Sc.

An excutive officer from a UC with a Medical School
Appointed by the Chancellor of UCLA

Dr. Washington is vice chancellor of health sciences and dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In his role as vice chancellor, he oversees the school of medicine and the UCLA Health System which includes four hospitals and the medical practices, and he serves as the principal spokesperson for health sciences on campus and to external constituencies. He is also a Distinguished professor of Gynecology and Health Policy at UCLA and holds the Gerald S. Levey, M.D. Endowed Chair.

Dr. Washington served as Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) from 2004 to 2010. He co-founded UCSF’s Medical Effectiveness Research Center for Diverse Populations in 1993 and served as the director from its establishment through July 2005. He was Chair of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences from 1996 to 2004. He also co-founded the UCSF-Stanford Evidence-based Practice Center and served as its first director from 1997 to 2002. Before joining the faculty at UCSF, Dr. Washington worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

A respected clinical investigator and health policy scholar, Dr. Washington has been a national leader in assessing medical technologies, developing clinical practice guidelines and establishing disease prevention policies, particularly for women’s health. He has published extensively in his major areas of research, which include prenatal genetic testing, cervical cancer screening and prevention, noncancerous uterine conditions management, reproductive tract infections, quality of health care, and racial/ethnic disparities in health outcomes. And he has been actively engaged in the training of medical students, residents, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty.

Dr. Washington was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences in 1997. He also received the Outstanding Service Medal from the U.S. Public Health Service and has been recognized by peers and staff. In 1999, he was named the UCSF School of Medicine Alumnus of the Year, the highest honor awarded by the Alumni-Faculty Association, in 2002 he received UCSF’s Martin Luther King Jr. Award, in recognition of extraordinary effort to promote diversity on the campus, and in 2006 he was inducted into the Gold-Headed Cane Society.

During the past 30 years, Dr. Washington has served on a number of professional and government boards and committees. He is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Board of Directors of The California Wellness Foundation. He also serves on the governing Council of the IOM and as a member of the congressionally-mandated Scientific Management Review Board for the National Institutes of Health.

A 1976 graduate of the UCSF School of Medicine, Dr. Washington completed graduate studies at both UC Berkeley and Harvard schools of public health and residency training at Stanford University.


Alternate Member
Emil Reisler
Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry 
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
and the Molecular Biology Institute 
University of California, Los Angeles

Emil Reisler is a Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Molecular Biology Institute of University of California, Los Angeles. He received his B.A. in Chemistry from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. He was then a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Biology Department of the Johns Hopkins University, and in 1976 joined UCLA’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry as an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry.

Professor Reisler served as a Chair of his department (1996-2000), and then the Dean of Life Sciences and Associate Dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (2004-2009). Over the years he has served on several editorial boards of scientific journals, on NIH Special Study Sections, and on review committees of various university programs and the American Heart Association.

Professor Reisler’s group has carried out research focused on structural understanding of motor proteins and of the actin based cytoskeleton system. Over the last decade the focus of his group has been on interactions of actin binding proteins with actin filaments and monomers. In close to 200 publications, reviews and book chapters, his group has contributed in a major way to the present mechanistic understanding of the interactions and the remodeling of cellular actin assemblies by the bound proteins.