Julie Sosa, MD, MA, FACS, FSSO
Chair, Department of Surgery
Endocrine surgeon
Dr. Julie Ann Sosa is an endocrine surgeon who specializes in thyroid cancer. She also has expertise in treating adults and children for a variety of benign and malignant endocrine conditions of the thyroid, parathyroid and adrenal glands. She chairs the UCSF Department of Surgery.
Sosa's research focuses on developing treatments for advanced thyroid cancer and understanding environmental factors that can raise a person's risk for the disease. She also has published extensively on predictors of optimal patient outcomes following a variety of cancer-based procedures.
Sosa earned her medical degree at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she also completed the Halsted residency in general surgery and served as chief resident. She completed a fellowship in clinical research with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation at Johns Hopkins, where she was also assistant chief of service and an instructor. She has a master's degree in human sciences from the University of Oxford. Prior to joining UCSF, she was chief of endocrine surgery at Duke University, and held leadership positions at the Duke Cancer Institute and Duke Clinical Research Institute.
Sosa is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. She is the elected editor-in-chief of the World Journal of Surgery, and had previous positions as deputy editor of JAMA Surgery and associate editor of the Journal of Surgical Research. She serves on the editorial boards of seven medical journals, including the Annals of Surgery, Surgery, Annals of Surgical Oncology, Endocrine and International Journal of Endocrine Oncology. She serves on the boards of the Society of Surgical Oncology, International Thyroid Oncology Group, Association for Academic Surgery Foundation and American Thyroid Association, where she is also treasurer. She is the Leon Goldman, MD Distinguished Professor of Surgery at UCSF.
Sosa was born in Montréal and raised in upstate New York.
