Sergio E. Baranzini is Professor In-Residence in the Department of Neurology at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). He is also a member of the Graduate Program in Bioinformatics, the Institute for Human Genetics, and of the California Institute for Quantitative Biology (QB3). He holds the Heidrich Friends and Family endowed chair in Neurology.
Dr. Baranzini earned his degrees in clinical biochemistry (1992) and PhD in human molecular genetics (1997) from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Dr. Baranzini then moved to UCSF to specialize in the analysis of complex hereditary diseases, and focused his efforts on multiple sclerosis. His current research involves the large throughout analysis of samples from MS patients to characterize the activity of genes during different stages of the disease, differential response to treatment, and disease progression. In addition Dr. Baranzini collaborates with several interdisciplinary teams worldwide to integrate all the available knowledge obtained in different research domains in an approach known as systems biology. Dr Baranzini’s current research also involves immunological studies using the EAE model, sequencing of whole genomes and transcriptomes from patients with multiple sclerosis and developing bioinformatics tools to integrate this information with that coming from other high throughput technologies. More recently, he has started a research program that will study the effect of bacterial populations (microbiota) on MS susceptibility and progression.