The Department of Anatomy includes 20 faculty members with primary full-time appointments, 16 faculty with joint appointments, and about 250 postdoctoral fellows and students engaged in research that covers questions in cell biology, developmental biology and the neurosciences.  Faculty have laboratories at both the Parnassus Heights campus, where there is a focus of interest in cancer biology, and at the Mission Bay campus, where many of the neurobiology faculty are located. The administrative office of the Department is located at the Parnassus Heights campus.

The faculty includes members of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Royal Society of London. In addition to their research effort, the faculty is committed to graduate and professional school education, with contributions to the medical, pharmacy and physical therapy students, as well as programs in continuing medical education. The Department is the administrative home of the Program in Developmental Biology, the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program, and the Willed Body Program.