Dr. Merchant is Regents Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology/ Hepatology at the University of Arizona. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of Physiological Sciences, is Associate Director for Basic Research and more recently completed her term as interim Director of the UA Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is also an associate director of the UA MSTP and currently serves as the President of the Association of American Physicians.
A native of Los Angeles, she received her BS in biology from Stanford University and completed her MD and PhD in Cell Biology at Yale School of Medicine. She completed her Internal Medicine residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston and subsequently a post-residency GI fellowship in molecular biology at MGH and clinical GI fellowship at UCLA. She held the H. Marvin Pollard Professorship at the University of Michigan where she was faculty from 1991-2018 prior to her recruitment to the University of Arizona in 2018.
As a molecular gastroenterologist, Dr. Merchant’s primary research interests include transcriptional control mechanisms regulating cell growth and differentiation and microbial-host interactions in the gastrointestinal tract. She is a member of several professional associations, including the AAP and ASCI. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2008 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017. She currently serves on both the AAP and National Academy of Medicine Councils. She is a member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research Scientific Advisory Council and serves on the Dean's Scientific Advisory Board for Yale School of Medicine. She has published over 170 research articles and is the editor or co-editor of four books and multiple book chapters. She serves on several editorial boards for Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology, Nature Reviews Gastroenterology/Hepatology and the Annual Review of Physiology.