Rate My Professor David Schwartz

David Schwartz, MD, is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus School of Medicine. He also holds professorships in Immunology and serves as the Robert W. Schrier Chair of Medicine and Chair of the Department of Medicine. Schwartz earned his BA in Biology from the University of Rochester in 1975, his MD from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in 1979, and his MPH in Occupational Medicine from Harvard School of Public Health in 1985. His career includes positions at Boston City Hospital, University of Washington, University of Iowa where he directed Occupational Medicine and the Center for Environmental Lung Disease, Duke University as Chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care and Walter Kempner Professor, and Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program at the NIH from 2005 to 2008. Since 2008, he has been at the University of Colorado, founding the Center for Genes, Environment, and Health at National Jewish Health.

Schwartz's research focuses on the genetics and genomics of pulmonary fibrosis, gene discovery in innate immunity, and epigenetics of environmental lung disease. He is renowned for identifying the common MUC5B promoter variant rs35705950 as a major risk factor for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), with key publications including the 2011 Nature Genetics genome-wide association study identifying multiple susceptibility loci, the 2013 NEJM paper on MUC5B and interstitial lung abnormalities, and the 2013 JAMA study linking it to IPF survival. Other notable works include studies on HLA variants in IPF (ERJ Open Res, 2024), progressive lung fibrosis (J Clin Invest, 2025), and airway-centric views of IPF (Am J Respir Cell Mol Biol, 2022). His contributions have shaped precision medicine in pulmonary fibrosis, earning him election to the Association of American Physicians, American Society for Clinical Investigation, American Thoracic Society Lifetime Scientific Achievement Award (2003), and numerous named lectureships such as the ATS Amberson Lecture (2013) and Champion of Environmental Health Research Award (2016). Schwartz has served on editorial boards for journals like American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology and American Journal of Medicine, and on NIH and VA review panels. With over 63,000 Google Scholar citations, his work has profoundly influenced understanding of genetic predisposition to lung diseases.