Leadership

Dr. Uma Mahadevan is the Lynne and Marc Benioff Professor of Gastroenterology, Director of the Colitis and Crohn’s Disease Center and Director of the Advanced IBD Fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. She specializes in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), particularly pregnancy and drug safety. She completed a medical degree at the State University of New York in Brooklyn, residency in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, Fellowship in gastroenterology at UCSF, and Advanced fellowship in IBD at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.  For her exceptional work in pregnancy and drug safety and her mentoring of GI fellows and junior faculty she received the AGA 2022 Immunology, Microbiology & Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IMIBD) Section Research Mentor Award and the 2022 Sherman Prize.

Dr. Mahadevan is a fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association, for whom she was Chair for the IMIBD Section, Chair of the AGA National IBD Parenthood initiative and Director (2023) and co-Director (2022, 2017) of the AGA Postgraduate Course. She is a Fellow of the American College of Gastroenterology and served on the Educational Affairs Committee and as a member of the Advanced IBD Fellow Curriculum Committee.  She is an inaugural councilor on the ASGE Artificial Intelligence Institute for Gastroenterology. She was Chair of the Crohns Colitis Foundation Clinical Research Grants committee, a member of the National Scientific Advisory Committee and Taskforce on Women in IBD, and co-chair of the annual Crohn’s Colitis Congress (2020). Dr. Mahadevan is a member of the International Organization of IBD (IOIBD) for which she serves on the nominating committee.

Dr. Mahadevan has served on many prestigious journals, including special section editor for Gastroenterology.  Dr. Mahadevan has published over 100 original articles, abstracts, editorials, and invited reviews in such peer-reviewed journals as Gastroenterology, Gut, Nature Reviews, American Journal of Gastroenterology, Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, and Lancet Gastroenterology Hepatology as well as several book chapters.  She authored the joint AGA, Society of Maternal Fetal Medicine Clinical Care Pathway on the Management of IBD in Pregnancy.

Dr. Mahadevan is a global expert on the management of pregnancy and drug safety in the patient with IBD. She chairs the Helmsley Global Consensus Conference on Management of Pregnancy in IBD (2024). She is also interested in the role of diet and IBD and has an ongoing original study in this area. Her current projects include a national prospective registry of pregnancy outcomes and drug safety in women with IBD on immunosuppressive and biologic medications (PIANO) and a clinical trial on the impact of nutritional interventions in the management of IBD (SEAMUS). She has an interest in digital health and lead the transition of the GI Division to telemedicine at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, developed an IBD Chatbot with the Center for Digital Health and Innovation at UCSF, an IBD smartnote. Dr. Mahadevan is proud to have mentored several Advanced IBD Fellows who know hold key roles in IBD Centers around the United States.