Assistant Professor in Residence, Department of Neurology
(415) 514-0490 office
(415) 514-0491 fax
Catherine.Lomen-Hoerth@ucsf.edu

I am an Assistant Professor in Residence in the Department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco where I have been on the faculty for 8 years. I currently direct the ALS Center at UCSF and the EMG fellowship program. I trained first at Stanford where I obtained MD and PhD degrees in Neuroscience in 1994 working in the laboratory of Dr. Eric Shooter. After pursuing a neurology residency at UCSF and finishing my last year as chief resident, I realized I wanted to integrate research and clinical practice in order to apply research more readily to patient care. Seeing first hand the rapid progression of ALS and the impact on patients’ lives motivated me to pursue a career in ALS clinical research. I wanted to impact the disease while maintaining close clinical contact with patients. My goals were to pursue clinical research while using my basic science background to collaborate with others to apply the advances in basic science to clinical research and vice versa.

In order to fulfill the goal of pursuing ALS clinical research, I completed a clinical neurophysiology and neuromuscular disease fellowship at UCSF in 1999. During this fellowship, I learned the electrophysiological techniques needed for my clinical research and further developed my clinical skills in neuromuscular disease. During my fellowship I received the Golseth award for an outstanding research paper and was an invited lecturer to open the plenary session at the AAEM meeting in Vancouver. Obtaining a K23 grant and an AAN-ERF Clinical Research Fellowship in 1999 to study electrophysiological and genetic predictors of prognosis in ALS enabled me to start my faculty appointment at UCSF with 100% grant funding for my salary.

Since that time, I have obtained several ALS association grant and am involved in an NIH program project grant with Dr. Bruce Miller on frontotemporal dementia. My current research focuses on environmental risk factors in ALS, clinical drug trials, early detection of dementia in ALS, and neuroimaging to predict prognosis.
I have become involved as a mentor at UCSF by serving as associate director for the office of student research in a funded position and in mentoring medical students and other research assistants working on my projects. I have an LCE student in my clinic each year and teach neurology and psychiatry residents weekly in my clinic. I chair the physician well-being committee at UCSF and direct the neuromuscular program. I direct the EMG fellowship program training the neuromuscular fellow in EMG and neuromuscular skills.
My research has resulted in several publications and I have been invited to give several lectures, nationally and internationally, on my research. Starting with the Golselth award lecture in 1999 for research conducted during my fellowship, I have spoken on national “ask the experts” panels for the ALS association, and delivered several platform presentations at national and international neurology meetings.

Outside of work, I enjoy hiking, cooking, and reading. I am involved in medical missions both locally and abroad.