As senior vice president for research, Daniel Dorsa, Ph.D., administers and coordinates academic research at OHSU and helps develop the agenda for building OHSU's research capacity. His office also manages core facilities associated with university shared resources program.

Dr. Dorsa has served as OHSU’s research leader since 2002, when he was recruited from the University of Washington. He has presided over the enormous growth of research during his tenure, guiding the institution from $221 million in grant funding in that year to $410 million in 2016. He has overseen projects including the Hildegard Lamfrom Biomedical Research Building and the Collaborative Life Sciences Building, and restructured OHSU core resources. Dr. Dorsa guided implementation of the Oregon Opportunity implementation, which allowed recruitment of world-class researchers and helped build the platform that led to significant additional research expansion.

Dr. Dorsa received his degree in endocrinology and physiology at the University of California, Davis. He completed his postdoctoral training at the Rudolf Magnus Institute for Pharmacology in the Netherlands and in Reproductive Biology at Stanford University. Dr. Dorsa’s research has focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms which underlie the effects of steroid hormones in the brain and nervous system. Of particular interest have been neuroprotective and behavioral actions of estrogens and related agents.