About

The Department of Laboratory Medicine has a long and proud tradition of providing leading edge clinical care, outstanding biomedical research, and comprehensive education in our field. We hope that our website reflects both where we are today and what we hope to achieve.

Representing one of the two major subdisciplines of Pathology (specifically "Clinical Pathology"), the roots of the Department go back to John Peters in the 20's and 30's, who worked tirelessly to bring quantitative chemical analysis to the elucidation of disease processes. That work, which began in what was then the Metabolic Division of the Yale Department of Medicine, helped to create the basis for the modern clinical laboratory, which, of course, has now become far more inclusive, embracing hematology, microbiology, virology, immunology, transfusion medicine, cellular therapy, and genetics, as well as clinical chemistry. The Laboratory Medicine program became a full-fledged Department in 1971 and since that time has worked seamlessly together with the Department of Pathology in advancing laboratory-based diagnostics, with the Department of Internal Medicine in advancing cellular-based therapies, and with all of our colleague basic science and clinical Departments at Yale in advancing the state of biomedical research.

The Department is located in the Yale-New Haven Medical Center, which includes the Medical School, Yale New Haven Hospital (one of the nation’s largest tertiary care facilities occupying two campuses in New Haven), the Children's Hospital at Yale-New Haven, the Smilow Cancer Center, and the Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital. The Yale-New Haven Health System further includes a number of additional hospitals in southern New England as well as distributed ambulatory facilities. In addition, the Department has a major presence at the VA Connecticut Medical Center campus, located in nearby West Haven, CT (serving 300,000 veterans in southern New England), and faculty are also very much involved in teaching and collaborative research at the main Yale University campus, located just a few blocks from the medical campus in New Haven with an additional “west campus” in West Haven. We are fortunate to be located in a truly livable metropolitan area, with a central 'college town' harboring a remarkable array of restaurants, theatre, music venues, museums, and nightlife and boasting a diverse population that refects the demographics of the United States as a whole. We are located approximately an hour and a half from New York City and two hours from Boston, linked not only by highways but by high speed rail.

Collectively performing over 16 million tests per year at its various sites, the Department provides high technology reference testing (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, cellular assays) to other institutions throughout New England and the Northeast and as far away as Puerto Rico. New physical facilities at the Yale-New Haven Medical Center in the brand-new Park Street building were constructed and completed in 2010 and include over 60,000 square feet of clinical laboratory space. The Transfusion and Cellular Therapy services are responsible for apheresis procedures, stem cell collection and engineering, and other cellular and protein infusion services; a GMP Cell Therapy Facility is also a part of the Department’s clinical and research footprint. Residencies in CP and AP/CP (under a single aegis with the Department of Pathology) are offered along with fellowships in Transfusion Medicine, Microbiology, Hematopathology, Clinical Chemistry, and Molecular Genetic Pathology. Both residencies and fellowships have vibrant physician-scientist tracks, that include the opportunity for mentoring not only by departmental faculty but also by faculty across the medical school and the other schools of Yale University. Not only are the resources of the entire University open to our trainees, but in addition to supporting our educational responsibilities in the medical school, our own faculty also teach in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Engineering School, and the School of Public Health, creating a collaborative, collegial network of mentors and trainees.

The faculty are engaged in T0-T4 basic, translational and clinical research. The major emphasis is on immunology, stem cell biology, host-pathogen interactions, transfusion medicine genetics, cancer and aging, and biomedical informatics. The research mission includes a long-standing NIH-funded Immunohematology training program for pre- and post-doctoral scientists and clinician-scientists, a major hub for NIH programs in Translational/Clinical Transfusion Medicine Research (NHLBI REDS IV-P program), and an NIH-funded Center of Excellence in Molecular Hematology. Newly renovated research laboratories were completed in 2024.

Again we welcome you to our website. Please contact us if we can provide additional information about the Department.