David Erle is the founding director of CoLabs. He received his MD from UCSF and completed clinical training in Internal Medicine and Pulmonary and Critical Care here. His own research interests center around the contributions of the airway epithelium to asthma and other airway diseases. He founded the UCSF Functional Genomics Core Facility, which subsequently evolved into the Genomics CoLab. He is a member of the Bakar ImmunoX Program, the Cardiovascular Research Institute, and the Institute for Human Genetics. He also serves as Associate Chair for Biomedical Research in the Department of Medicine.