Simon W. Beaven, MD, PhD

Dr. Beaven attended Stanford University where he majored in mathematics with honors in humanities. He went on to receive his MD from the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Beaven completed internal medicine residency training at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. He came to UCLA in 2003 as a fellow in digestive diseases where he completed his gastroenterology fellowship. During this period, Dr. Beaven continued his research training and received a PhD with Dr. Peter Tontonoz in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Pathology. His doctoral work focused on cholesterol and lipid metabolism as it pertains to an important clinical problem: the metabolic syndrome. His major research interests include the biology of the hepatic stellate cell and the genetics of liver fibrosis, especially in relation to fatty liver and the metabolic syndrome. He also directs quality improvement and clinical research projects in gastroenterology and liver disease at the Olive View-UCLA Medical Center.

Dr. Beaven has been chief of gastroenterology and hepatology at the Olive View-UCLA Medical Center since 2018. He also maintains an active hepatology practice at the Pfleger Liver Institute at UCLA where he sees patients with all types of liver diseases and also specializes in the diagnosis and management of porphyrias as part of the NIH-funded Porphyira Consortium and Rare Disease Network. He is a member of several national and international specialty groups studying porphyrias. Dr. Beaven is an active peer reviewer for several scientific journals and an abstract review chair for the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). Dr. Beaven is an active peer reviewer for several scientific journals, including Diabetes, Molecular & Cellular Biology, Hepatology, Gastroenterology, and the Journal of Lipid Research.