Richard Haas, MD

Richard Haas, MD is director of the Neurometabolic Clinic at Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego and director of the Mitochondrial Disease Laboratory and a professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

After earning his medical degree from the University of London, he completed residencies in internal medicine, neurology and pediatrics, followed by a fellowship in pediatric neurology at the University of Colorado.

Dr. Haas's clinical interests include neurometabolic disease, general child neurology, Rett Syndrome, neuromuscular disease and neonatal neurology. In 1994, he established what is now the Mitochondrial and Metabolic Disease Center and laboratory at UC San Diego as a facility dedicated to the research and clinical evaluation of mitochondrial disorders. His attempt to merge research and patient care has been a hallmark of his career and has created a referral base of both domestic and international patients.

Dr. Haas's research focuses on mitochondrial disorders and the relationship between metabolic defects and serious neurological diseases. He and Robert Naviaux, M.D., Ph.D., identified mutations in mitochondrial polymerase activity as the cause of Alper's syndrome, a devastating childhood mitochondrial disease. He also recently collaborated with researchers at UC Irvine to study mitochondrial dysfunction in autism.

He serves on the editorial board of the European Journal of Pediatric Neurology and is a member of the scientific advisory board of the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation. Dr. Haas reviews various journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Pediatric Neurology, Annals of Neurology and Molecular Genetics and Metabolism.
As director and principal investigator for the North American Mitochondrial Disease Consortium training fellowship, he aims to train clinician scientists who will be able to bring promising new treatments for mitochondrial disease into the clinical arena.