Nicholas F. LaRusso, M.D., Charles H. Weinman Endowed Professor of Medicine, is Director of the Center for Innovation at Mayo and a Distinguished Investigator of the Mayo Foundation.

Prior to becoming Center Director in 2008, he was Vice Chair for Research of the Department of Medicine (DOM), Chair of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and Chair of the DOM at Mayo Clinic. Before assuming a faculty position at Mayo in 1977, he was a guest investigator at the Rockefeller University in the laboratory of the Noble laureate, Christian de Duve. A member of the American Association of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians, he is the former editor of GASTROENTEROLOGY and past president of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). Among other honors, he is a recipient of a MERIT Award and the Principle Investigator on two R01s from the NIH; he also received Distinguished Achievement Awards from both the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) and the AASLD, and the Distinguished Mentor Award of the AGA. He is currently President of the AGA.

He received his undergraduate degree (magna cum laude) from Boston College, his M.D. degree from New York Medical College, and his training in internal medicine and gastroenterology at Mayo, the latter as an NIH fellow in the laboratory of Alan Hofmann.