Columbia University is bringing in a high-profile cardiologist and administrator from the University of California San Francisco to head its medical center and to serve as dean of its medical faculty.

The president of Columbia, Lee Bollinger, has announced that Lee Goldman, 58, will start his new role in late June as dean of the faculties of health sciences and medicine, which encompass all four of Columbia’s medical and health schools.

Dr. Goldman, who also will oversee health sciences at the university and assume professorships at three of the medical divisions, will replace Gerald Fischbach, who announced last year that he would step down as dean in June.

During a phone interview yesterday, Dr. Goldman said his goal would be to help the “top programs become even stronger, while developing strength across the full spectrum.”

“The sheer size of the research enterprise at Columbia is not as large as it is at some other places,” he said. “That is not a criticism of the quality of what is there, but of the breadth of what is there. I’d like to see it expand and grow.”

Dr. Goldman, who has been touted for increasing funding from the National Institutes of Health, said the soon-to-be-built campus in Manhattanville would help make that expansion a reality. He also said he hopes to attract more money and more top notch doctors.

“He has proven himself as an extraordinary leader in the world of academic medicine at two of Columbia’s greatest peer institutions,” Mr. Bollinger said in a statement.

Columbia officials denied the suggestion that Dr. Fischbach, a nationally renowned neurobiologist, was pressured to step down by faculty. He will be joining the Manhattan-based Simons Foundation part-time to head its Autism Project, in which the foundation is making a major investment over the next five years.

“He’s a neuroscientist, and I think he’s been eager to get back to doing science,” the chief communications officer for the medical center, Marilyn Castaldi, said. “As a senior administrator, you don’t really have time for that, especially at a medical center of this scope.”

A call to Dr. Fischbach’s office yes terday afternoon was not returned. The announcement comes after a more than year-long search by a 20-member committee, which was headed by Mr. Bollinger. Three finalists made the school’s short list for the job, one of the most prestigious in the field.

Dr. Goldman, who has three degrees from Yale University, has been at the University of California San Francisco since 1995. Before that he was a professor at Harvard Medical School and at Harvard’s School of Public Health.

Yesterday, the chairman of the pathology department at UCSF, Abul Abbas, said Dr. Goldman had built up the department of medicine there and made it the leading school in terms of funding from the National Institutes of Health. “I think he’s a real leader in academic medicine,” Dr. Abbas said.

Dr. Goldman comes to Columbia at a time when funding and space are two of the foremost issues. He will be overseeing an operating budget of $1.2 billion and $628 million in sponsored research grants from the NIH and individual foundations.

Last month, Columbia announced a $200 million gift, its largest private donation ever, to establish a new research and teaching facility in brain behavior and neuroscience.

Meanwhile, the dean of Columbia’s School of the Arts, Bruce Ferguson, has resigned effective June 30. Mr. Ferguson will go to the Art Gallery of Ontario and consult for the University of Miami, regarding an arts graduate program, and Arizona State University.