Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, M.D., 1994
Julie Ann Sosa, MD, MA, FACS is professor and chair of the UCSF Department of Surgery and holds the Leon Goldman, MD, Distinguished Professorship in Surgery.
Dr. Sosa was born in Montreal and raised in upstate New York. She received her AB at Princeton, her MA at Oxford, and her MD at Johns Hopkins, where she also completed the Halsted residency program and a fellowship. Her clinical interest is in endocrine surgery, with a focus in thyroid cancer. She is widely published in outcomes analysis, as well as cost-effectiveness analysis, meta-analysis, and survey-based research.
Dr. Sosa is the newly elected editor in chief of the World Journal of Surgery, having served previously as deputy editor of JAMA-Surgery and associate editor of the Journal of Surgical Research. She is on the editorial boards of the Annals of Surgery, Surgery, Annals of Surgical Oncology, Endocrine, Hormones and Cancer, Journal of Thyroid Research, and the International Journal of Endocrine Oncology. She is Treasurer of the American Thyroid Association (ATA) and serves on the Board of Directors/Executive Council of the ATA, Society of Surgical Oncology, International Thyroid Oncology Group, and Association for Academic Surgery Foundation. She has served on ATA guidelines committees for hyperthyroidism, thyroid nodules and differentiated thyroid cancer, and on the NCCN guidelines committee for neuroendocrine tumors.
Dr. Sosa has published more than 280 peer-reviewed manuscripts, 50 book chapters, and has authored/edited 4 books. She has been the recipient of grants from the NIH/NCI, Paget Foundation, the Association for Academic Surgery, the Donaghue Foundation, the American Geriatrics Association/Hartford Foundation, and the Connecticut Stem Cell Research Fund.
Dr. Sosa has served as principal investigator on a number of therapeutic and correlative clinical trials, largely centered around the development of novel small molecule therapies for advanced thyroid cancer and understanding environmental risk factors for the development of the disease. She has mentored more than 70 students, residents, and fellows, and has made surgical education a focus of her science, co-directing the multi-year, prospective National Study of Expectations and Attitudes of Residents in Surgery (NEARS) in conjunction with the American Board of Surgery.
Research Protocols
"Automated isolation of single cells using high-resolution and subcellular imaging"
"The association of polybrominated diphenyl ethers and papillary thyroid carcinoma"
"The genetics of endocrine neoplasia registry (GENR): A registry for patients with medullary thyroid carcinoma"
Dr Sosa's clinical interests are in surgical oncology, focused primarily on the management of thyroid cancer. Her research interests are in health services, clinical trials and translational research, focusing on identifying ways to optimize patient outcomes following surgery and in the arena of endocrine neoplasia and thyroid cancer in particular. Dr. Sosa has mentored approximately 75 students, residents, fellows and junior faculty over her career.
Trainees can participate in her endocrine surgery research group and ongoing research efforts focused in cancer registry development, clinical trials, and outcomes research in surgical oncology, including R-01/FDA collaboration.