People

David Mortara, PhD

Founder

Dr. David Mortara earned his PhD in physics from University of Illinois and has been involved in the advancement of electrocardiography since 1973. He developed the GE 12-SL algorithm for ECG interpretation still in use today. Mortara's research spans ECG technology, including automated interpretation, exercise testing, and rhythm monitoring. He founded Mortara Instruments, known for high-quality ECG equipment, and later established the Center for Biosignal Research (formerly Center for Physiologic Research).

Fabio Badilini, PhD

Co-Director

Dr. Fabio Badilini earned his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Rochester and has had an influential career as a biomedical engineer focused on development of signal processing methods and algorithms in the context of cardiovascular signals, and in particular the electrocardiogram. He is the founder of AMPS LLC, a company that makes clinical and research grade analyses tools for ECG, Holter and other bio-signals that has not only become the widely-used standard in most pharma trials, but because it is recording-device agnostic is also used clinically (with many FDA-approved analyses algorithms). He is also founder of CardioCalm, SRL, an Italian-based telemedicine company. He has maintained his close ties with academia throughout his career and joined UCSF with a part-time appointment to direct the CBR in 2018. In this role, he has collaborated with many faculty in the Cardiology Division, supporting our Bio-Signal Core with using the AMPS tools.  He has been an active member of International Society of Computerized Electrocardiology (ISCE), of which he is currently President, and the Cardiac Safety Research Consortium (CSRC), where he leads the ECG database committee.

Geoff Tison, MD, MPH 

Co-Director

Dr. Geoff Tison is a practicing cardiologist and Associate Professor in the Division of Cardiology at UCSF. As an NIH-funded researcher and expert in artificial intelligence applied to medicine, his research program focuses on improving cardiovascular disease phenotyping and prevention using artificial intelligence and epidemiologic methods with large-scale medical data. He completed internal medicine residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and subsequently completed fellowships in general cardiology, advanced echocardiography and preventive cardiology at UCSF. He obtained formal training in epidemiology, statistical methods and machine learning during his tenure at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and as a National Institutes of Health T32 scholar. He received the DP2 New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health Office of the Director, and his work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, among others.

Nicole Ersaro, PhD

Scientific Program Manager

Dr. Nicole Ersaro earned her PhD in Biomedical Informatics at Stanford University, and B.S. and M.S. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Drexel University. Her doctoral research focused on computational approaches to functionally interpret non-coding rare genetic variation, work she continued at Illumina's Artificial Intelligence Lab prior to joining the CBR in 2025. As scientific program manager, she oversees all CBR activities while driving ongoing research efforts and working to translate the results to the clinic.

Allan Minn, BS

Data and Software Manager

Joyce Lee, MD

Postdoctoral scholar

Dr. Joyce Lee earned her M.D. from UC Irvine, and completed neurology residence at University at Pennsylvania. Her prior research focused on applying reinforcement learning techniques to a range of topics, including antibiotic stewardship and inferring infectious disease transmission trees. She joined the CBR in 2026 as a postdoctoral researcher, focusing on analyzing the CBR's biosignal data, and also exploring ways to potentially deploy novel biosignal monitoring algorithms into clinical practice.