Victor Nizet, MD Professor of Pediatrics & Pharmacy

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Victor Nizet received his undergraduate education at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in Biology and completing a senior thesis in the field of evolutionary ecology with Prof. Robert Kaplan. He subsequently began his medical training at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California where he was first introduced to the science of bacterial pathogenesis as a research assistant in the laboratory of Prof. Gary Schoolnik.  After graduation, Prof. Nizet completed a Residency and served as Chief Resident in Pediatrics at Harvard University's Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts and a Fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Washington's Children's Hospital in Seattle.  During his fellowship training, Prof. Nizet studied in the bacterial pathogenesis research laboratories of Profs. Craig Rubens and Arnold Smith, working on the molecular pathogenesis of group B Streptococcus and Haemophilus influenzae, respectively. In 1997, Prof. Nizet joined the faculty of the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of California, San Diego.  Ever since, his laboratory offers a variety of training opportunities for UCSD graduate and undergraduate students, clinical infectious diseases fellows and PhD or MD/PhD postdoctoral fellows.

In 2006, Prof. Nizet was named Chief of the  Division of Pharmacology & Drug Discovery at UCSD School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics and the UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences.  This Division encompasses faculty in basic, translational, and clinical research, including the investigators and staff of the NICHD-Funded UCSD Research Program in Developmental Pharmacology.  The program seeks to establish a pathway for drug development from initial discovery of novel compounds and targets through to early stage clinical trials, with a major focus on development of new anti-infective strategies. Prof. Nizet's work has been recognized by the Sidney Farber Award, the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society Young Investigator Award, the Edward Mallinckrodt, Jr. Foundation Scholar Award, the American Heart Association Established Investigator Award,  the American Lung Association Career Investigator Award, a Stephen Silberstein Senior Fellowship of the American Asthma Foundation, and the 2008 E. Mead Johnson Award for Research in Pediatrics.  He has been elected to the Society for Pediatric Research, the American Pediatric Society, the American Society for Clinical Investigation,  the Association of American Physicians, and the American Academy of Microbiology. Dr. Nizet is spearheading the faculty initiative for the UCSD Health Sciences Center for Immunity, Infection & Inflammation which will debut in 2014 with participation from >100 UCSD Health Sciences Investigators, >40 investigators across the greater UCSD campus, and close interaction with a community of colleagues from the La Jolla Institute of Allergy & Immunology, the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, the J. Craig Venter Institute, and local biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. Curriculum vitae  (.PDF)