Personal Statement

Roberta Gottlieb, MD, obtained her bachelor’s and medical degrees from Johns Hopkins University. She trained in pediatrics and hematology/oncology at University of Texas, Houston, and did postdoctoral work at University of California, San Diego. After 15 years as a faculty member at The Scripps Research Institute, Gottlieb moved to San Diego State University, where she served as the first director of the Donald P. Shiley BioScience Center. Under her leadership the BioScience Center, which opened in 2006 and grew over the next seven years to comprise eight labs, garnered more than $14 million in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding and published more than 100 scientific papers. Gottlieb joined the Smidt Heart Institute and Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center in September 2013, where she is conducting translational research on ischemia/reperfusion injury and cardioprotection, with an emphasis on the impact of age and metabolic syndrome on adaptive autophagy and cardioprotection. Gottlieb is principal investigator on a prestigious NIH Program Project grant, and has published more than 100 papers in respected peer-reviewed journals, as well as many review articles and book chapters. She was the editor for Autophagy in Health and Disease, a textbook published by Academic Press. Gottlieb holds four patents and has founded two biotech startups, Radical Therapeutix in 2005 and TissueNetix in 2011. She believes that mentoring is her most important legacy as a scientist.