University of California San Francisco Program

Program Identity & Fit

UCSF's Medical Genetics and Genomics program is a two-year, academically embedded residency requiring prior training in a primary ACGME specialty (pediatrics, internal medicine, OB/GYN, pathology, family medicine), reflecting its role as a subspecialty add-on for physicians already committed to another clinical base. Training spans inpatient consultation at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, an extensive outpatient subspecialty clinic structure (General Genetics, Neurometabolic, Craniofacial, Ras/MAPK, Autism, prenatal diagnosis), and rotations through cytogenetics, molecular, and biochemical genetics laboratories, giving residents both diagnostic clinical and wet-lab technical competency. Research is structurally mandated (six protected months in year two, IRB-driven clinical or lab projects) and supported by the Institute for Human Genetics, with many residents extending into a research-heavy third year; the program is also intertwined with the Maternal Fetal Medicine fellowship, and its alumni trajectory (largely academic geneticists, MFM faculty, and health-system geneticists) signals a strong academic/subspecialty-medicine orientation. The program values residents who can integrate rigorous laboratory-based diagnostic reasoning with longitudinal clinical genetics care and who will pursue scholarly output alongside clinical training.