MASLD Research Center Director

Rohit Loomba, MD, MHSc

Director of Hepatology, Professor of Medicine

University of California at San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA, 92093-0887

Executive Assistant: Paula Hall
Phone: (858)534-3506
Email: pehall@health.ucsd.edu 

 Research Assistant: Harris Siddiqi
Phone: (858) 246-5417
Email: hsiddiqi@health.ucsd.edu 

Dr. Rohit Loomba is a Professor of Medicine (with tenure), Director of Hepatology, at the University of California at San Diego. He is an internationally recognized thought leader in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), and non-invasive assessment of liver disease using advanced imaging modalities.

Dr. Loomba is the founding director of the UCSD MASLD Research Center which is one of the most well-funded clinical and translational research programs at UCSD. The MASLD Research Center fosters collaborative team science where a multi-disciplinary team of researchers are conducting cutting edge research in all aspects of MASLD including non-invasive biomarkers, genetics, epidemiology, clinical trial design, imaging end-points, and integrated OMICs using microbiome, metabolome and lipidome. This integrated approach has led to several innovative applications such as establishment of MRI-PDFF as a non-invasive biomarker of treatment response in early phase trials in MASH, which has now been adopted in more than a hundred clinical trials conducted worldwide. He holds several patents on non-invasive biomarkers of MASH and fibrosis.

His research is funded by the National Institutes of Health as a Principal Investigator including two R01s, three U01 (two NIDDK and one from NIAAA), clinical core director of P30 (NIDDK) and project director P01 (NHLBI) grant mechanisms, Foundation of NIH, as well as several large multicenter, multi-million dollar investigator initiated research projects funded by the industry. He is the Principal Investigator, UCSD, for the NIDDK-sponsored MASH Clinical Research Network and the Liver Cirrhosis Network.

Dr. Loomba is passionate regarding clinical research mentoring and future leaders in liver disease. The UCSD MASLD Research Center has become a global hub for training in clinical research methodology in liver diseases for junior investigators who visit from all over the world. He serves/or has served on the mentoring team of more than 10 K-awardees, several of his mentees are now leading their respective centers and are key opinion leaders in the field. He has mentored eighteen undergraduate students who are now attending medical school. U.S. World News has ranked UCSD Gastroenterology and Hepatology Number 1 Globally in Research and Education.

He serves on the Editorial Board of Gastroenterology, Journal of Hepatology, GUT and Nature Reviews in Gastroenterology and Hepatology. He recently completed a 5-year term as the Deputy Editor of Hepatology, the official journal of the AASLD. Currently, he serves as the Co-Editor of Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics, an international journal in the field of Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Dr. Loomba is an elected member of American Society of Clinical Investigation. He has published more than 500 manuscripts and has an H-index of 126. He has been consistently listed among the top 1% of the globally, highly cited scientists across all fields (1 in a 1000 scientists and researchers) in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 by Web of Science.