Leslie Leinwand
- Chief Scientific Officer, BioFrontiers Institute
- Distinguished Professor, Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
- Professor, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Dr. Leinwand’s research focuses on the genetics and molecular physiology of inherited diseases of the heart and skeletal muscle, and how biological sex modifies heart and skeletal muscle. The study of these diseases has required multidisciplinary approaches, involving biophysics, molecular biology, mouse genetics, cardiac physiology, and the analysis of human tissues.
Dr. Leinwand received her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and her Ph.D. from Yale University, and she completed her post-doctoral training at Rockefeller University. She joined the faculty at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York in 1981 and remained there until moving to Colorado in 1995 to be Chair of MCDB.
She co-founded Myogen, Inc. (acq. by Gilead in 2006), Hiberna, Inc., and MyoKardia, Inc. (acq. by Bristol Myers Squibb in 2020).
Dr. Leinwand is an AAAS Fellow, former NIH MERIT Awardee, American Heart Association Established Investigator, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. She serves on the International Council for the International Society for Heart Research. She has been honored by the American Heart Association with its Distinguished Scientist Award, and her teaching was recognized by funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Professor Program.