Dr. Jorge Nieva graduated from the University of California, Irvine College of Medicine in 1997, trained in internal medicine at University of California, San Diego and in oncology and hematology at the Scripps Clinic. In 2003 he joined the faculty of the Scripps Research Institute and the medical staff of the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, CA. While at Scripps, Dr. Nieva pioneered new technology for the detection of cancer cells in the peripheral blood and discoveries related to the fundamental mechanisms of the immune system.

Dr. Nieva was recruited to the Billings Clinic in Montana in 2007 where he served as department chair and was a program leader who established the multidisciplinary lung cancer and head/neck cancer clinics at the cancer center. While in Billings, Dr. Nieva led efforts to establish a research program in virus-delivered cancer gene therapy and immunotherapy. His teams were awarded certificates for excellence in the conduct of cancer clinical trials from the National Cancer Institute and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Dr. Nieva returned to California, joining the faculty of the Keck School of Medicine in 2014.