Eric Vilain, M.D., Ph.D., is the Director of the Institute for Clinical and Translational Science and the Associate Vice Chancellor of Scientific Affairs at the University of California, Irvine.

Dr. Vilain has a longstanding interest in the translational genetics (from diagnostic to clinical management) of rare diseases as well as differences of sex development. He has identified a large number of novel genetic variants in sex-determining genes and developed animal models with atypical sexual development. He has published extensively in the fields of genetics and endocrinology.

Dr. Vilain earned his medical degree from the Paris Children's Hospital Necker, and his Ph.D., from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France. He then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in medical genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he became professor of Human Genetics, Pediatrics and Urology in the David Geffen School of Medicine and the Chief of Medical Genetics. He then became the director of the Center for Genetic Medicine Research and Chair of Genomics and Precision Medicine at Children's National Hospital and George Washington University, and recently came back to California to lead the CTSA at the University of California, Irvine

He has received numerous awards, notably from the National Institute of Health, the March of Dimes, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Society for Pediatric Research. He is a fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics, a longstanding advisor to the International Olympic Committee on Hyperandrogenism in Athletes and a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors for the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).