New Professors in the Yale Department of Internal Medicine

It is a tremendous honor to be promoted to clinical professor. This achievement fulfills a long dream to be recognized for clinical excellence and scholarship. It makes me feel like the important work of caring for patients is validated.

I immediately shared the news with my husband and three amazing children, who have been incredibly supportive of my career and have shown tremendous flexibility in accommodating the demands of a working mother.

I then reached out to my mentors, who have been strong advocates and helped me navigate the promotions process.

I am proud to be a respected clinician in the community. I have had the opportunity to touch many lives and help patients and their families navigate serious and protracted illnesses. I’ve seen the way our diligent work to diagnose and treat people with HIV infections has led our patients to have long, healthy, and fulfilling lives. I am so proud to have been a part of their care.

As an educator, I am immensely proud of the many residents and fellows I have mentored and taught who have gone on to national and international prominence. (You know who you are!)

I love the intellectual stimulation of being at an academic institution where there are always opportunities for teaching and learning. I enjoy attending didactic conferences where I always learn something new, and I relish the opportunity for collaboration and discussion with my colleagues.

I have had the great opportunity to participate in multidisciplinary collaborations across several specialties. These collaborations have led to the creation of working groups to improve clinical care and generate ideas for clinical research projects, some of which have been presented at national and international meetings and published in peer-reviewed journals. Projects have included improving management of endocarditis in people who inject drugs, creating a program for diagnosis and treatment of atypical mycobacterial therapy, and partnering with colleagues to improve prevention, diagnosis, and management of prosthetic joint infections.

I love gardening and am working to rewild my suburban lawn by replacing traditional grass with clover and wildflowers.

It is the culmination of years of overcoming self-doubt and ambitious hard work. To be recognized in this capacity by Yale School of Medicine is the ultimate accomplishment.

I took a deep breath, smiled, and then told my kids and my husband.

I am proud of getting to a place where I am closer to understanding the patient experience than I was when I first started on this journey, and having some tools to work on improving that experience for our patients.

I love the unquestioned camaraderie and generosity that come with being a part of this community. It is awe-inspiring and sets a standard to live up to.

I love to cook, and take a number of lessons from watching competitive cooking programs.

I started my academic career as an undergraduate molecular biophysics and biochemistry (MB&B) major at Yale, graduating in 1987. While my training and career took me to NYU, Harvard, and Mount Sinai, returning to Yale as professor of internal medicine feels like a type of homecoming and is deeply gratifying.

I have always sought to create meaningful impact in my professional career: whether it was developing new treatments for cancer patients, conducting translational research that elucidates new insights in cancer progression, building a new cancer center in NYC, or mentoring young clinician-investigators as they build their own careers.

Working with teams to solve problems is why I love academia. Having been in industry and non-profits, I have seen different models for improving human health, but ultimately, Yale's world-class research, clinical expertise, and rich learning environment mix together in an amazing way to create collaborations that I believe will improve outcomes for patients with cancer.

I deejayed parties as a Yale undergrad, but must not have been good enough to make that my career!

I am grateful to my department for recognizing my career achievements; I feel valued as a faculty member. In that regard, this promotion is a pivotal point for me. It signals to me that it's my turn to mentor and lead, and to help other trainees and rising faculty develop their career passions and pursuits.

I heard directly from my section chief about my promotion. I reveled in it for a bit and, of course, celebrated with my family.

At this point in my career, I am most proud of being able to develop connections all across the world with other professionals who share my passion for sleep medicine, and to be able to work alongside them to move the field forward through clinical research, practice guidelines, and health-related advocacy. I feel very fortunate to have been surrounded by supportive, inquisitive, intelligent people throughout the course of my career.

My favorite part of academia is being able to explore questions that inevitably pop up during my clinical practice. It is immensely fulfilling to have the resources, support, and expertise all around me to explore these questions in a scientific way that can impact clinical practice.

I first developed my passion for sleep medicine after taking a course as an undergraduate called "Sleep and Dreams" at Stanford, and now, in full circle fashion, I am co-teaching an undergraduate class called "Mystery of Sleep" at Yale. I hope to inspire a passion for sleep medicine for an unsuspecting student in the same way as someone did for me.