Program Leadership

Coleman returns to Yale following a 16-year tenure as chair of the Department of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and chief of the medical service at Boston Medical Center. Prior to that he served as chief of medical service at VA Connecticut for 10 years and interim chair of the Department of Medicine at YSM for nearly four years. Coleman served as co-chair with Richard Lifton, MD, PhD, of the committee that recommended the establishment of YCCI in 2004. The first ten years of Coleman's faculty career were focused on laboratory-based research on the mechanisms of macrophage activation. He had an active teaching and clinical load during this period, and also served as the Director of Hospital Epidemiology and Infection Control and Director of the HIV Care program at academically affiliated Veterans Affairs Medical Centers. In 1993, Coleman assumed the position of Chief of Medical Service at the VA Medical Service in West Haven Connecticut affiliated with Yale School of Medicine. The responsibilities of this position were expanded in 1995 to include all of VA Connecticut that ultimately included two acute care facilities, six community-based clinics, and affiliations with both Yale and the University of Connecticut Schools of Medicine. While Chief of Medical Service for VA Connecticut, Coleman also served as Acting Specialty and Acute Care Line Manager for three years and Acting Chief of Staff for a year and a half. In these positions, he had additional oversight responsibility for the clinical and academic affairs of he acute care line at VA Connecticut. In February 2003, he assumed the position of Interim Chair of the Department of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine and Chief of the Beeson Medical Service at Yale-New Haven Medical Center. During that time he led the school-wide strategic planning process to develop the clinical and population-based research that led to the establishment of the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation and was the basis for the successful application for a Clinical Translational Science Award. Coleman then became the John Wade Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief at Boston Medical Center. He served on the Board of Trustees of the Boston Medical Center, on the Board of Directors of the Faculty Practice Plan of Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine, and was a member of the Executive Committee at Boston University School of Medicine. He has had a long-standing interest in basic mechanisms of macrophage function and the role of cytokines in regulating host defenses. His recent work has focused on medical professionalism in medical education and clinical practice.

Dr. Krystal is a leading expert in the areas of alcoholism, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, and depression. His work links psychopharmacology, neuroimaging, molecular genetics, and computational neuroscience to study the neurobiology and treatment of these disorders. He is best known for leading the discovery of the rapid antidepressant effects of ketamine in depressed patients.He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine. He also serves in a variety of advisory and review capacities for NIAAA, NIMH, Wellcome Trust, Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, the Broad Institute, the Karolinska Institutet, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.Dr. Krystal previously served on the National Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Advisory Council (NIAAA), the Department of Defense Psychological Health Advisory Committee, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Advisory Council, and the NIMH Board of Scientific Counselors (chair, 2005-2007). He has led the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (president, 2012), and International College of Neuropsychophamacology (president, 2016-2018). Currently, he is co-chair of the Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders (NeuroForum) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and he edits the journal, Biological Psychiatry (impact factor: 13.382).

Brian R. Smith MD is Deputy Dean for Clinical and Translational Research at the Yale School of Medicine, as well as Co-Director of the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation (Co-PI of Yale's CTSA Award), Chair of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Professor of Laboratory Medicine, Biomedical Engineering, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at Yale University. He is the Chief of Laboratory Medicine and Attending Physician at Yale New Haven Hospital and also an attending physician at the Connecticut VA Medical Center and the Bridgeport Hospital. Dr. Smith received his undergraduate degree summa cum laude from Princeton University, his medical degree from the Harvard Medical School, and his residency/fellowship training at The Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Dana Farber Cancer Center. He is board certified in Pathology / Hematopathology and in Internal Medicine / Hematology-Oncology. In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Smith has an investigative interest in the inflammation-hemostasis interface, especially in relation to biomaterials, as well as in cellular immunotherapeutics, with over 175 publications. His work extends from basic wet bench research through clinical and epidemiological trials (T1-T4). He has been continuously funded by the NIH at the PI-level for over 35 years. In these various roles, Dr. Smith has major administrative responsibility for the School’s research enterprise across the T1-T4 spectrum, as well as educational responsibilities across the scientific pipeline from STEM high school student programs through undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate training, for MDs, PhDs, and MD/PhDs. He is the initiator and long-standing PI of Laboratory Medicine’s post-doctoral T32 training program in Immunohematology and has personally mentored over 50 MD, MD/PhD, and PhD trainees, most of whom hold tenure-track positions at major research universities. In addition to directing trainees in bench and translational research, Dr. Smith has extensive experience in the didactic aspects of comprehensive training and career development for clinician-scientists, having developed and published curricula in Laboratory Medicine, developed and published new physician-scientist training paradigms in his field, and, in his capacity as the Chair of the Research Committee for the Association of Pathology Chairs, initiated and helped negotiate a dialogue with the American Board of Pathology that, with the work of many other Chairs of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, resulted in the adoption of a specific Physician-Scientist residency pathway by the Board. Similarly, through his research experience, dean position, and appointment in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, he is very involved with all aspects of PhD training at both the pre- and post-doctoral levels. He has been an invited lecturer on Bioethics and previously served on the NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee. Dr. Smith has also played a significant role in gender equity initiatives at Yale. In addition, he has overseen the implementation of research core facilities in Translational Immune Monitoring, Flow Cytometry, and Clinical Sample Real Time Acquisition, chairs the Clinical Research Technology Committee, and has been a guiding member of a Cellular Therapy core resource, all of which have been used successfully by Yale investigators as well as by investigators from other universities.

An athlete her entire life, Melinda Irwin, PhD, MPH, originally planned on specializing in orthopedics. But college courses in human anatomy, physiology, nutrition, statistics and epidemiology led her to shift gears to public health. She ultimately decided to pursue a PhD, rather than an MD, in order to explore the connection between lifestyle factors and chronic disease. Since joining Yale in 2001, Dr. Irwin has concentrated on the role of lifestyle behaviors in cancer prevention and prognosis.This is increasingly relevant for breast cancer – the focus of much of her work - since mortality has decreased during the past two decades but survivors are at risk for recurrence and debilitating side effects due to treatment. Her work has shown that even after women have been diagnosed with breast cancer, they can substantially lower the risk of both recurrence and mortality by exercising. This holds true even for women who don’t become physically active until after their diagnosis. She has expanded her research into other cancers, showing that a moderate-intensity walking program improved physical functioning and reduced cancer-related fatigue in patients diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Dr. Irwin, who considers herself a biobehavioral researcher, is also examining the effect of exercise and weight loss on cancer biomarkers, showing that weight loss decreased C-reactive protein, a marker of systemic inflammation related to cancer. Her current research interests are focused on examining whether lifestyle behaviors also indirectly improve survival via improvements in medication adherence. “Given the improvement in treatment for many diseases, especially cancer, some people have a window of opportunity to change their lifestyle,” she said. “Others may already be living a healthy lifestyle but have difficulty maintaining it because of treatment, so we need to help them do that.”Dr. Irwin hopes that this line of research will lead to incorporating weight management and exercise management into the clinic as part of reimbursable cancer care, in much the same way that cardiac rehabilitation is now standard of care.Dr. Irwin is interested in the effects of exercise on other chronic diseases and is excited about her role at YCCI, which is allowing her to collaborate with faculty across the Yale campus. She is focusing on creating efficiencies between centers and expanding resources and opportunities for public health and population science research. She is equally eager to foster opportunities for junior faculty and feels better equipped to mentor younger colleagues after taking YCCI’s course on mentoring. “I hope to be able to give back in terms of more collaborations, synergies, efficiencies, and training opportunities,” she said.

Growing up in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, a health professional shortage area, Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, MHS, remembers countless stories of loved ones and members of her community who struggled with their health or died prematurely. That experience led her to pursue a career in medicine and conduct research that focuses on vulnerable populations and their interactions with healthcare systems.Ever since her arrival at Yale as a fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program (CSP), Dr. Nunez-Smith has been on a mission to develop ways of addressing health and healthcare inequities wherever they are found: in patient settings, in the healthcare workforce, and in medical education. As a 2006 YCCI Scholar, she gathered preliminary data for what is now known as PreDict (Patient-Reported Experiences of Discrimination in Care Tool). PreDict is a tool that assesses the patient care experience and measures hospital performance with the goal of improving the quality of care delivery. “The Scholar award was tremendously helpful because it allowed me to launch a line of inquiry that was new and then provided me with the resources to complete the preliminary work that allowed us to be competitive for major NIH grants,” she said.Dr. Nunez-Smith went on to develop the Eastern Caribbean Health Outcomes Research Network (ECHORN), a collaborative multi-million dollar research study funded by the National Institute for Minority Health Disparities (NIMHD). ECHORN examines the risk factors and prevalence of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease in the Eastern Caribbean, a region for which such data are lacking.Both ECHORN and PreDict – which has spurred several related projects undertaken by her mentees – are now incorporated into the Equity Research and Innovation Center (ERIC), for which Dr. Nunez-Smith serves as director. ERIC builds on the local, national, and global experience of Dr. Nunez-Smith and 60 team members that are involved in research aimed at narrowing health and healthcare inequities, as well as disparities in the healthcare workforce and medical education.As a former YCCI Scholar, Dr. Nunez-Smith appreciates the benefits of mentorship and serves as academic advisor to Yale School of Medicine students. She also continues her involvement with the CSP as a core faculty member of the Scholars Program and co-director of Community Research Initiatives. “I’m working towards synergy across all of these programs so they’re not siloed,” she said. “The idea is to think about core elements of knowledge for our faculty for population health and health equity and engage stakeholders in our work.”

Eric J. Velazquez, MD, the Robert W. Berliner Professor of Medicine, is an internationally recognized authority in heart failure, cardiovascular clinical trials, and cardiac imaging.Velazquez serves as the section chief for Cardiovascular Medicine for Yale School of Medicine and the Physician-in-Chief of the Heart and Vascular Center for Yale New Haven Health where he coordinates a high-volume enterprise and an outstanding group of clinician-investigators, physician scientists, and staff who make important contributions across patient care, research and educational domains. He leads more than 150 specialists who focus on every area of cardiac medicine, tapping into a broad array of tools, technologies, and expertise. Additionally, he is the Deputy Director, Clinical Trials Innovation at the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation. Velazquez chose to pursue a career in cardiovascular medicine twenty years ago and through key leadership positions, he has pursued clinical, research, and methodologic interests and facilitated multicenter clinical research programs and quality initiatives with substantive focus and impact on vulnerable and underserved populations at high medical risk, and has honed the administrative skills required to implement challenging programs in diverse settings globally. Today, much of his research and clinical work focuses on the intersection between heart failure and coronary heart disease. As a clinical investigator, he has made major contributions in the design, development, and implementation of landmark clinical trials that have altered international guidelines and the treatment of patients with chronic heart failure. These programs have established the evidence for best practice standards, modified treatment guidelines, and have had a direct impact on the U.S. public health.

Dr. Cong received her PhD from Case Western Reserve University, MSN from Chiang Mai University, and BS from Peking University. She is a nursing researcher with longstanding clinical and research interests in symptoms science, e.g., the bio-behavioral mechanisms of pain and stress and self-management with health outcomes. In 2022, she became Associate Dean of Research at the Yale School of Nursing. She is one of the first nurse scientists investigating pain/stress and neurodevelopment in infants using multi-omic approaches. Her research addresses some of the most complex issues surrounding early life experience in high-risk infants and implementation of pain management strategies in vulnerable populations. She has over 20 years of research experience and have led many projects funded by the NIH-NINR. The impact of her research is far-reaching in biobehavioral science, symptom management, healthcare policies, and practice.

Brian Sevier is the Chief Operations Officer (COO) for the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation (YCCI). As part of the YCCI, Brian is leading a team of professionals and infrastructure resources to support translational research and science; from study design and development, to study activation, and operational enrollment and recruitment services. This includes supporting activities for the Yale CTSA (UL1, KL2, and TL1) award from the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS). He has been involved in academic research administration for over 20-years, and has previously led contracts and grants administration for the University of Florida Health Sciences Center, and clinical research operations at the University of Florida Office of Clinical Research, UF Health Cancer Center, and the UF Clinical and Translational Science Institute, where he most recently held the role as Director of the Office of Clinical Research and COO for the UF CTSI.