On March 16, 2016, UCSF officially launched the Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) as a new Organized Research Unit (ORU) within the School of Pharmacy.

Building on the foundations of the Molecular Design Institute (MDI), established in 1993 by Irwin “Tack” Kuntz, QBI emerged at a moment when revolutions in computational and quantitative biology finally made it possible to apply mathematics, computation, and statistics to the most complex problems in biology. 

With strong support from UCSF leadership and the UC Office of the President, the former dean of the School of Pharmacy, B. Joseph Guglielmo, transformed MDI into QBI, appointing Nevan Krogan as the founding director. Krogan, a professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes, is known for his systems biology approach—viewing biology as an interconnected system to unravel disease mechanisms and identify therapeutic opportunities. This view would become central to QBI’s approach to science.

QBI was designed to operate in a disease-agnostic environment, harnessing quantitative tools to understand biology at a fundamental level and translate those insights into new treatments. In its first years, QBI focused on oncology, psychiatric disorders, and infectious diseases, launching pioneering Cell Mapping Initiatives—including the Cancer, Psychiatric, and Host-Pathogen Cell Map Initiatives. These efforts later gave rise to other initiatives such as the HIV Accessory and Regulatory Complexes (HARC), the QBI Coronavirus Research Group (QCRG), and Rezo Therapeutics.

At its core, QBI is built on a simple principle: the most important questions in biology and medicine cannot be solved in isolation. By bringing together researchers across disciplines, QBI connects the biomedical and physical sciences through shared tools, ideas, and a common purpose. This approach has grown into a research ecosystem defined by four interconnected pillars:

• Technology – new tools that open frontiers in biology

• Disease-focused research – directing research efforts toward urgent biomedical challenges

• Translation – bridges across academia and industry that accelerate the translation of insights into real-world solutions

• People – a diverse, collaborative community of researchers, trainees, and staff

Together, these pillars create an environment where ideas move freely across disciplines, discoveries build on one another, and progress accelerates.