Dr. Dara is an NIH funded physician-scientist and clinician. She completed her Gastroenterology training at USC, is board certified in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology and practices primarily as a hepatologist (liver specialist). She is the director of the USC Liver Autoimmune and Rare Conditions Clinic in Pasadena (SOLAR CLINIC), where her practice is focused on rare liver diseases autoimmune liver diseases such as Drug-Induced Liver Injury, and Autoimmune Liver Diseases: Autoimmune Hepatitis (AIH) and Primary Biliary Cholangitis (PBC) and their variant syndromes. She is also on the liver faculty at the Los Angeles General Medical Center where she treats patients with liver disease (including alcohol associated liver disease, fatty liver disease, viral hepatitis, liver failure, cirrhosis of the liver, drug-induced liver disease, metabolic and genetic disorders of the liver among many others).

Her research focuses on disorders of the liver including drug induced liver injury and hepatotoxicity from medications, drugs, toxins, and herbal supplements in translational animal models as well as humans. She participates as an investigator on the NIH’s Drug Induced Liver Injury Network (DILIN) and is a reviewer for the LiverTox website. Additionally, she conducts translational studies in Autoimmune Hepatitis and PBC, and studies their outcomes in patients with a focus on understanding difficult to treat autoimmune liver diseases.