Dr. Jacobson earned his BS from Yale University and his MD from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. After completing an internship and residency at the University of California San Francisco he trained as a fellow in gastroenterology and hepatology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. In 1984 he joined the faculty at Weill Cornell Medical College and New York Presbyterian Hospital. During his 30 years at Weill Cornell, Dr. Jacobson served as Chief of the Division of the Gastroenterology and Hepatology from 1998-2015 and was Vincent Astor Distinguished Professor of Medicine as well as Medical Director of the Center for the Study of Hepatitis C. From 2015 to 2017 he was Chair of Medicine at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center. He joined the faculty of NYU School of Medicine as Professor of Medicine and currently serves as Director of Hepatology Research.
In addition to maintaining an active practice with a focus on patients with liver disease, he has been an investigator in many trials on antiviral therapy for hepatitis B and C, including the pivotal trials on interferon-based therapy and direct-acting antivirals for HCV, since the 1980s. He has been lead principal investigator and author of a number of trials, including the WIN-R trial (weight based ribavirin with peginterferon), ADVANCE (telaprevir), QUEST-1 (simeprevir), POSITRON (sofosbuvir), STARTVerso3 (faldaprevir), C-SALT (grazoprevir and elbasvir in advanced cirrhotics), and POLARIS-2 (sofosbuvir, voxilaprevir, velpatasvir). He has served on the Gastroenterology and Transplant Hepatology Boards of the American Board of Internal Medicine, as Associate Editor and member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Hepatology. He has authored or co-authored over 300 peer-reviewed papers, chapters and reviews, including papers in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Gastroenterology, Hepatology, Journal of Hepatology, Journal of Viral Hepatitis, and Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. He has edited a volume on hepatitis B for Clinics in Liver Disease. With Professor Stefan Zeuzem, he co-chaired the annual Viral Hepatitis Congress in Frankfurt, Germany from 2012-2017. He has served on the Board of Trustees of the Chronic Liver Disease Foundation since 2019. His clinical research has recently focused on viral hepatitis, fatty liver disease, and cholestatic liver disease.