SAN FRANCISCO—A new gun-violence research center in California will be led by a doctor and researcher who has been using his own money to fund gun-violence research at the University of California, Davis.

Garen Wintemute, an emergency-room doctor who leads a gun-violence research group at the school, will head the new University of California Firearm Violence Research Center at UC Davis, according to plans announced this week by University of California President Janet Napolitano.

The state’s Democratic-controlled legislature set aside $5 million earlier this year to fund the center, which the school said is the first state-funded center of its kind in the country.

There is little research on gun violence because of restrictions on such research placed on the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the late 1990s. As federal funding dried up, Dr. Wintemute said he has personally donated $1.3 million to researching gun violence at the school.

Dr. Wintemute, 64 years old, said that he intends to study some basic questions about guns in California, including who is most at risk for gun violence and whether the state’s tight controls on firearms are having an effect.