We are pleased to announce that after an international search, Associate Professor Helen Kim, MPH, PhD, has been appointed as the Director of the UCSF Center for Cerebrovascular Research (UCSF CCR).
Dr. Kim received her MPH in epidemiology from Emory University in Atlanta, and her PhD in epidemiology from Washington University in Seattle.
She has worked as an investigator at the CCR for over a decade. Dr. Kim’s research focuses on identifying risk factors that predispose younger individuals to stroke and cardiovascular disease. Currently, her group is studying the genetic epidemiology of hemorrhagic stroke and modifiers of outcome after hemorrhage or treatment in patients with brain vascular malformations. In 2017, she and her colleagues published a breakthrough study in Nature, establishing the connection between brain vascular malformations and our microbiome, or gut bacteria. The article, “Endothelial TLR4 and the Microbiome Drive Cerebral Cavernous Malformations,” was featured in major news outlets such as the New York Times. Specifically, Dr. Kim and her colleagues played a major role in demonstrating the relevance of the animal findings for this study, using the human cerebral cavernous malformation (CCM) cohort from their U54-funded BVMC CCM study.
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Kim and supporting her and the CCR’s efforts.