Dr. Cummings is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Coordinating Center (SFCC) that he founded in 1979. He is also a professor of medicine, epidemiology, and biostatistics emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).  He is an internationally renowned expert in research on aging and osteoporosis.

He and colleagues at the SFCC led the large clinical trials that resulted in U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval and widespread use of most of the treatments used for osteoporosis, including Fosamax® (alendronate), Prolia® (raloxifene) and Evista® (raloxifene), as well as the studies that first established the value of bone density and risk factors for hip fractures that are widely used in clinical practice.  Dr. Cummings has also led the largest studies on the biology of human aging that discovered genetic variants promoting longevity.

He is the Principal Investigator of the Longevity Consortium that aligns experts on the epidemiology of aging, geneticists, centenarians, and biology of aging in mice and other species to find the genetic variants and molecules in blood that promote healthy longevity in humans.

Including these Consortium initiatives, Dr. Cummings leads the largest studies of the biological basis of human aging. He designed and oversees the Study of Muscle, Mobility and Aging (SOMMA), the first study to use biopsies of muscle and fat with advanced magnetic resonance imaging to identify the factors in human cells that promote strength, endurance, and independence in older adults.

Dr. Cummings has published over 500 research articles.  He has received numerous national and international awards for his clinical research. Dr. Cummings was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Medicine, also known as the Institute of Medicine in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in recognition of the excellence and impact of his clinical research.