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Igor Mitrovic, MD
Professor
What I do
I am responsible for physiology education across UCSF’s health professional schools. I teach physiology and pathophysiology and I direct Renal Theme, one of the first-year integrated courses administered through the Department of Clinical Pharmacy.
Biography
Dr. Igor Mitrovic, Professor of Physiology and Clinical Pharmacy, received his M.D. from the University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia (at the time) in 1991. However, most of his studies were completed at the University of Zagreb (up to 1991). After conducting neurobiology of addiction research at Loyola University Medical School in Chicago and research in neurobiology of pain at UCSF, Dr. Mitrovic joined the Department of Physiology, UCSF, in 2001 as a teaching faculty member. Dr. Mitrovic is responsible for the physiology and pathophysiology curriculum across the professional schools at UCSF (Medicine, Pharmacy, and Dentistry). Dr. Mitrovic has led the design of the competency-based, integrated curriculum at UCSF School of Pharmacy and has served as the Vice Dean of PharmD Education. Moreover, Dr. Mitrovic has participated in and led curricular and faculty development at UCSF, nationally, and internationally, and has served as an external reviewer for the medical school accreditation committee of the Republic of Serbia.
Dr. Mitrovic cares deeply for students from underresourced populations and has mentored numerous high school students, undergraduate students, and UCSF graduate students from the underresourced communities. In addition, he has also mentored numerous postdoctoral fellows, residents, and junior faculty to help them excel as educators and professionals. For his work in education, Dr. Mitrovic has received numerous awards and honors, including Long Awards in the School of Pharmacy, Excellence of Teaching Awards in the School of Dentistry, Kaiser Teaching Awards in the School of Medicine, the Distinction in Teaching Award from the UCSF Academic Senate, and an honorary Doctorate from University of Kragujevac, Republic of Serbia.
Through the teaching and mentoring, Dr. Mitrovic became aware of the critical importance of two factors for academic and professional success: access to the right information and emotional resiliency. While the information can be addressed readily, addressing the resiliency issue is much harder. Thus, he joined forces with several colleagues to develop Emotional Brain Training, a neuroscience-based psychotherapeutic method designed to increase stress resilience and promote well-being.
Research keywords
- Clonidine
- Narcotics
- Analgesics
- Receptors, Opioid, kappa
- Globus Pallidus
- Iontophoresis
- Substance P
- Potassium Channels, Inwardly Rectifying
- Adrenergic alpha-Agonists
- Potassium Channels
- Ventral Tegmental Area
- Enkephalins
- morphine
- Enkephalin, Ala(2)-MePhe(4)-Gly(5)-
- Receptors, Opioid, mu