Dr. Leinwand is a Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) Distinguished Professor and the Chief Scientific Officer of the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her 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.
She co-founded Myogen, Inc., which was sold to Gilead Pharmaceuticals. More recently, she was a co-founder of Hiberna, Inc., and of MyoKardia, Inc., a company founded to develop therapeutics for inherited cardiomyopathies. Bristol Myers Squibb acquired MyoKardia in late 2020.
She received her Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and her PhD from Yale University, and 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. Dr. Leinwand is a Fellow of the AAAS, former MERIT Awardee of the NIH, Established Investigator of the American Heart Association, elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors, and 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.
