George Rutherford, MD | Interim Executive Director, Global Health Sciences

George W. Rutherford, MD, is the interim Executive Director of the Institute for Global Health Sciences at UCSF. A professor of Epidemiology, Preventive Medicine, Pediatrics, and History, he leads the Division of Infectious Disease and Global Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the School of Medicine.

Educated at Stanford University and Duke University School of Medicine, Dr. Rutherford is board-certified in pediatrics and in public health and general preventive medicine. His work focuses on the epidemiology and control of communicable diseases. He has served as State Health Officer and State Epidemiologist for California.

His current academic interest is HIV and other epidemic-prone diseases in low- and middle-income countries. He is an advisor to the World Health Organization and has also served on numerous National Academy of Medicine boards and committees, focusing on HIV and military and veteran populations. He was the first chair of the Department of Veterans Affairs Research Advisory Council.

Dr. Rutherford has recently completed a year as an Honorary Professor in the Department of Public Health, Environments and Society at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for the 2022-23 academic year.

He co-chairs the UCSF Chancellor’s Global Disaster Assistance Committee, which was set up early in the 2014 West African Ebolavirus epidemic. He has been involved in the public health response to SARS-CoV-2 since the earliest days of the pandemic, at the campus, city, state, and national levels.

Visit the Institute for Global Health Sciences website.