Office of Academic & Professional Development

Nancy J. Brown, M.D. is the Jean and David W. Wallace Dean of Yale School of Medicine and the C.N.H. Long professor of Internal Medicine. Prior to coming to Yale, Dr. Brown served as chair of the Vanderbilt Department of Medicine and physician-in-chief of Vanderbilt University Medical Center from 2010 to 2020. Dr. Brown's research has focused on the mechanisms through which the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone, kallikrein-kinin, and incretin systems affect inflammation, thrombosis, metabolism and cardiovascular risk. Her lab defined the contribution of endogenous bradykinin to fibrinolysis in humans and the prothrombotic and fibrotic effects of aldosterone mediated by plasminogen activator inhibitor-1. Her research group identified African ancestry and specific genetic variants as risk factors for angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor-associated angioedema. Ongoing research in the laboratory focuses on the mechanism(s) of combined angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB)/neprilysin inhibitors in heart failure as well as on the cardiovascular effects of incretin-based anti-diabetic therapies. As a clinician, Dr. Brown's specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of resistant hypertension; since coming to Yale, she has volunteered in the student-run HAVEN clinic. Throughout her career, Dr. Brown has worked to promote the development of physician-scientists. She established the Vanderbilt Master of Science in Clinical Investigation in 2000. From 2006-2010, she served as the Associate Dean for Clinical and Translational Scientist Development at Vanderbilt and established an institutional infrastructure to support physician-scientists in the transition to independence. Dr. Brown served on the NIH National Advisory Research Resources Council and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Advisory Council. Her research has been recognized by the Harriet Dustan Award from the American Heart Association, the E.K. Frey-E. Werle Foundation, the August M. Watanabe Prize in Translational Research, and others. In 2018, she was named the Robert H. Williams, MD, Distinguished Chair of Medicine by the Association of Professors of Medicine. Dr. Brown is a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Association of Physicians, the American Clinical and Climatological Association, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

I am involved in the coordination of faculty development both within the Department of Psychiatry and in Yale School of Medicine with a focus of working with non-procedural and bridge departments. I have served in several research, education, and clinical leadership positions in the Department of Psychiatry and affiliated non-profit clinical, research, and policy organizations including The APT Foundation, Silver Hill Hospital, and The National Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse. I direct the faculty reappointment and promotion processes in my department and am involved in the development and evaluation of medical school-wide junior faculty mentoring programs. I am a trained mentor and professional coach and consult with junior faculty and departmental leaders on: promotion processes and readiness; incorporation into academic review processes improved assessments of clinical and educational excellence, professionalism, and diversity and inclusion activities, and; consultation on matters related to professional stress, burnout, and impairment. My clinical expertise is the treatment of patients with addiction and co-occurring personality disorders, and I have developed and conducted clinical trials on a specialized psychotherapy for these complex patients and founded a specialized residential treatment program for high functioning professionals (particularly physicians and attorneys) and executives suffering from these disorders. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I  developed and directed a 1:1 professional support provider services program for Yale  Medicine and Yale New Haven Health healthcare workers and their families.

Dr. Angélique Bordey holds the rank of Professor of Neurosurgery, and Cellular & Molecular Physiology. Dr. Bordey is an active participant in teaching and training of graduate and medical students at Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Bordey is an  Editor for several journals and on the advisory board of CURE epilepsy and the TSC Alliance preclinical consortium. She has served as a permanent member on several grant review committees and NIH study sections. Finally, she is a McKnight awardee and holds several federal and foundation grants as well as patents for the treatment of epilepsy.

Dr. Friedlaender received his BA and MD degrees from the University of Michigan and his orthopaedic surgical training at Yale-New Haven Hospital and Newington Children’s Hospital. In 1976, after 2 years service in the U.S. Navy assigned to the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Dr. Friedlaender joined the full-time faculty of Yale University School of Medicine and since 1986 has served as the Wayne O. Southwick Professor and, until 2016, Chair of the Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation and Chief of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation at Yale New Haven Hospital. Dr. Friedlaender has also trained at Massachusetts General Hospital in musculoskeletal oncology, which remains his primary clinical and research interest.Learn more about Dr. Friedlaender>>Dr. Friedlaender has served as President of the American Association of Tissue Banks (1983-85), the American Council on Transplantation (1983-85), the Orthopaedic Research Society (1994-95), the Academic Orthopaedic Society (1995-96), the Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons (2001-02) and the American Orthopaedic Association (2010-11). He has also chaired the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeon’s Council of Musculoskeletal Specialty Societies and served as a member of the Academy’s Board of Directors and as a member of the AAOS Committee on Ethics. In the past, Dr. Friedlaender served as Chair of the National Arthritis Board, NIAMS (NIH), as a member of the Orthopaedic Study Section at NIH and as a member of the Advisory Council of NIAMS. He was chair of the Research Committees of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the Academic Orthopaedic Society and chaired the AAOS work group on Tissue Banking Issues. He served or serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, Spine, Journal of Orthopaedic Research and the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons; and he has written numerous scientific publications and received national awards for his basic science research (Kappa Delta Award of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgery and the Nicholas Andry Award of the Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons).

Veda N. Giri, MD is a medical oncologist with specialization in clinical cancer genetics. Dr. Giri is Division Chief of Clinical Cancer Genetics for Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital and Assistant Director of Clinical Cancer Genetics for Yale Cancer Center, where she leads an integrated and comprehensive effort in cancer genetic evaluation to inform precision medicine, tailored cancer screening, and hereditary cancer risk. She is also Director of the Early Onset Cancer Program. In 2023 she was named a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (FASCO). Dr. Giri's research portfolio includes population science studies focused on genetic evaluation of cancer risk, disparities in access to genetic testing and genetic counseling, and implementation research. She has led numerous studies to advance the field of genetic counseling and genetic testing for inherited prostate cancer. Dr. Giri started the first Men’s Genetic Risk Clinic in the US in 2014 focused on genetic evaluation of inherited prostate cancer in the setting of multidisciplinary care. Dr. Giri also co-chaired the 2017 and 2019 Philadelphia Prostate Cancer Consensus Conferences that addressed development of comprehensive frameworks for genetic evaluation and implementation of genetic testing for prostate cancer. She is the Principal Investigator of multiple grant-funded prostate cancer genetic evaluation studies spanning genetic counseling, genetic testing, disparities, behavioral science, and implementation research. As leader of clinical cancer genetics, Dr. Giri plans to expand population science studies across cancer populations and in the community setting. Dr. Giri received her medical degree from Sidney Kimmel Medical College (previously Jefferson Medical College) and proceeded to complete her residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Hematology-Oncology at the University of Michigan. She then completed advanced training in molecular cancer genetics and cancer risk assessment at Fox Chase Cancer Center. She also has a certification in cancer risk assessment from City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Giri currently serves on several national committees including the NIH PDQ® Cancer Genetics Editorial Board, ASCO Evidence-Based Medicine Committee, ASCO Cancer Care Delivery Council, ASCO Health Equity and Outcomes Committee, and ASCO Coverage and Reimbursement Steering Committee contributing expertise in cancer risk assessment and genetics at the national level.

Mehra Golshan, MD, MBA, is a cancer surgeon and a nationally and internationally recognized leader in breast cancer treatment and research. In addition to caring for patients, he serves as Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Surgical Services at Smilow Cancer Hospital and Yale Cancer Center. Dr. Golshan also serves as the Executive Vice Chair of Operations in the Department of Surgery and Professor of Surgical Oncology at the Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Golshan is a leader in the research with over 150 peer reviewed publications. He has led numerous Phase I, II and III clinical trials and translational science innovations impacting the treatment options and outcomes for women. He is an innovator in tailoring surgery and therapy for women with early stage breast cancer with funding support from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and National Institutes of Health. He is the principal investigator of several phase II trials aiming to reduce the need for second surgeries or re-excisions in women with breast cancer, one of which uses innovative image-guided operating room capabilities to capture and remove all residual tumor utilizing MRI and mass spectrometry which is used at Yale’s hybrid operating room. Dr. Golshan prides himself on being an educator having trained and mentored over a hundred breast surgical fellows as well as international surgeons. He has lectured and taught surgeons, trainees and students nationally and internationally in the field of oncology and breast cancer treatment. Dr. Golshan is a Board Member of the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC), Chair of NAPBC Education Committee, Chair of the American College of Surgeons Committee on Interprofessional Education and Practice, and Commissioner Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs and Board member of the MIT Sloan Alumni Board. Dr. Golshan completed his fellowship in breast surgical oncology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He earned his Medical Degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and an MBA at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management in Cambridge Massachusetts. Prior to joining Yale, he spent 17 years in Boston at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute where he was the inaugural and incumbent Dr. Abdul Mohsen and Sultana Al-Tuwaijri Distinguished Chair in Surgical Oncology. He also served as the Director of the Breast Surgical Oncology Fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Massachusetts General Hospital and was an Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Golshan’s approach to breast cancer treatment is through a specialized team approach. For each new patient, Smilow brings together a team of medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, reconstruction surgeons, pathologists, genetics, breast imagers, radiologists, program nurses, and a robust clinical research program. “I work closely with so many colleagues dedicated deeply to treating and curing breast cancer who inspire me to be a better physician, scientist, and person every day."

Elizabeth Jonas received training in Neurology and Internal Medicine. She developed an interest in Neuroscience while studying as a medical student with Dr. Rodolfo Llinas at N.Y.U. and at the Marine Biological Laboratory. With Dr. Llinas she developed an interest in calcium control of synaptic transmission. She pursued this interest as a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Leonard Kaczmarek, Yale Pharmacology. Dr. Jonas developed a technique for recording from ion channels on intracellular membranes and has used this and other techniques to study mitochondria. Mitochondria are necessary for life and death of neurons and other cells. Regulation of mitochondrial metabolism is also key to energy efficiency in the nervous system. Dr. Jonas is now studying the role of mitochondria and energy efficiency in neurodegenerative disease states and in learning and memory formation in healthy brain. Her lab has recently characterized the molecular identity of the cell death channel known as the mitochondrial permeability transition pore and is now studying how inhibiting gating of the pore may ameliorate stroke, neurodegenerative and developmental brain diseases.

Dr. Naftali Kaminski is, as of July 1st, 2013, the Boehringer-Ingelheim Endowed Professor of Internal Medicine and Chief of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, at Yale School of Medicine. Before that he was a tenured professor of Medicine, Pathology, Computational Biology and Human Genetics, and the Dorothy P. and Richard P. Simmons Endowed Chair for Pulmonary Research at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Kaminski was the director of the Dorothy P. and Richard P. Simmons Center for Interstitial Lung Disease and the Lung, Blood and Vascular Center for Genomic Medicine at the division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine in University of Pittsburgh. Dr Kaminski received his medical degree from the Hebrew University - Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, Israel, and completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Hadassah Mount-Scopus University Hospital in Jerusalem, and a fellowship in pulmonary medicine at Sheba Medical Center in Tel-Hashomer, Israel. Dr Kaminski received his basic science training in Dean Sheppard's laboratory at the Lung Biology Center at UCSF and in functional genomics and microarray technology at the Functional Genomics laboratory at Roche Bioscience, Palo-Alto. After his fellowship in 2000, Dr. Kaminski was appointed head of Functional Genomics at Sheba Medical Center in Israel, before being recruited to head the Simmons Center at the University of Pittsburgh in 2002.Dr. Kaminski's main research interests involve applying genomic approaches to elucidate basic mechanisms and improve diagnosis and treatment of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF), a chronic mostly lethal and currently untreatable scarring lung disease and other chronic lung diseases such Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), severe asthma and sarcoidosis. His group pioneered the application of high throughput genome scale transcript profiling in advanced lung disease. Among his key scientific achievements are: The discovery of novel molecules  with significant active roles in pulmonary fibrosis, including matrix metalloproteases (MMP7, MMP19) and phosphatases (SHP2, MKP5) , demonstrating that microRNAs, a family of small non-coding RNAs, are differentially expressed in IPF, and that some of them (let-7, mir-29, mir-33) are mechanistically involved in lung fibrosis, and the discovery that the outcome of patients with IPF can be predicted based on the expression of peripheral blood proteins and genes, a finding with practical implication because of the need for risk stratification and transplant prioritization. More recently Dr. Kaminski's team identified a potential antifibrotic role for thyroid hormone signaling, a novel discovery with significant therapeutic implications, and performed single cell RNA sequencing on >300,000 cells obtained from patients with advanced lung disease and created an online freely available data dissemination tool (www.IPFCellAtlas.com). Dr. Kaminski has a strong interest in integrating high throughput ‘omics’ data, such as genome scale DNA variants, coding and non-coding RNAs, microbiome and metabolome information with clinical information to generate systems biology models of lung diseases and to develop precision medicine approaches that are significantly more precise, predictive and patient-centered than anything that is currently available.Since completing his clinical training, Dr. Kaminski authored more than 340 research papers (including in Nature Medicine, NEJM, Nature Genetics, Nature Communications, PNAS, Science Advances, Science Translational Medicine, Circulation, Lancet Respiratory Medicine, ARCCM and ERJ among others) review articles and book chapters and has given numerous invited talks at national and international conferences, review articles and book chapters and has given numerous invited talks at national and International conferences. Since he finished his fellowship in 2000, Dr. Kaminski has been consistently funded by NIH and is the PI of multiple NIH grants. Dr. Kaminski was a recipient of the Marvin I. Schwarz Award for contributions to patient care and research in pulmonary fibrosis from the Coalition for Pulmonary Fibrosis in 2010 and the University of Pittsburgh Innovator Award in 2012. In 2013, Dr. Kaminski received the American Thoracic Society Recognition of Scientific Achievements award, as well the Helmholtz Institute International Fellow. In 2015 he was elected to the Association of American Physicians. In 2016 he was elected as Fellow of the European Respiratory Society (ERS), and won   the European Respiratory Society Gold medal for Interstitial Lung Disease. In 2018, Dr. Kaminski received the Andy Tager Excellence in Mentorship Award from the Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology Assembly of the American Thoracic Society and was elected fellow of the American Thoracic Society and received the Yale Blavatnik Innovation Award. In 2022 Kaminski received the American Thoracic Society Amberson Lecture award.  Dr. Kaminski is active on the ATS and was the editor of “Gene Express”, a column on genomics in the initial days of the ATS Website, a member and chair of the Program Committee of the Assembly on Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology of the ATS, and member of the ATS Research Advocacy Committee, and Chair of the Assembly on Respiratory, Cell, and Molecular Biology at the American Thoracic Society. He was an associate editor of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical care Medicine, a member of multiple editorial boards and recently the Deputy Editor of Thorax, BMJ. Dr. Kaminski served as the President of the Association of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Division Directors in 2019. Dr. Kaminski is passionate about training physician-scientists for the challenges of 21st century medicine, and especially in the vocabulary, skills and technology of the new fields of genomics, bioinformatics, computational and system biology and their application to understanding the basic mechanisms that govern lung health and disease as well as to designed personalized medicine approaches and has mentored multiple MD and PhD scientists, of them many have productive and well funded independent career. He has most recently recognized for his commitment to mentoring with the American Thoracic Society Andy Tager excellence in mentoring award.Follow Dr. Kaminski on Twitter @kaminskimed Follow Dr. Kaminski on mastodon @kaminskimed@med-mastodon.com<a rel="me" href="https://med-mastodon.com/@Kaminskimed">Mastodon</a>

Viji Kurup MD is Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at Yale. Viji completed her Residency in Anesthesiology and Fellowship in Cardiothoracic Anesthesia at Yale. She has been on faculty in the department since 2005 where she has developed a career as a medical educator. She has completed her fellowship in Medical Education and is currently Vice Chair for Medical Education as well as Director of the Yale Anesthesia Media Lab and the Course Director for the Anesthesia Resident Simulations. She has led the integration of the Flipped Classroom model for Anesthesia Resident Training at Yale.Viji's academic interests include participating in Global Health projects and exploring innovative ways of integrating technology in medical education. She is also the Co-Chair for the Global health and outreach committee in the Society for Education in Anesthesia (SEA). She has volunteered with the Health Volunteer Overseas Program (www.hvousa.org) in Vietnam. She enjoys teaching and was awarded the Faculty Award for Excellence in Education and Leadership for the Department of Anesthesiology. She is a firm believer in the importance of physician wellness and has introduced a comprehensive wellness curriculum within her department. She is the Past President of the CT State Society of Anesthesiologists and is actively involved in advocacy efforts both at the State and Federal level. She also volunteers in the community and is a regular speaker at career day for inner city schools in New Haven. She lives in Trumbull CT with her husband and two kids, and because that was clearly not keeping her busy enough, a high-maintenance cat!! In her free time, she enjoys cooking, painting (acrylic on canvas), reading and meditating..

Chi Liu received his Ph.D. in 2008 from Johns Hopkins University with emphasis on quantitative SPECT/CT imaging. Following his graduate work, he was a postdoctoral fellow at University of Washington, specializing in oncological PET/CT studies with emphasis on compensation algorithms for respiratory motion. In 2010, he joined Yale University as a faculty member. He is board certified in Nuclear Medicine physics and instrumentation by the American Board of Science in Nuclear Medicine. His current research focuses on quantitative cardiac and oncological PET/CT and SPECT/CT imaging, including deep learning algorithms, reconstruction algorithms, data correction, dynamic imaging, and translational imaging. The translational and clinical applications of these projects include early detection of chemotherapy-induced cardiotoxicity, multimodality imaging of heart failure, and eliminating respiratory motion variability for assessing response to therapy. Many of the imaging technologies developed in his lab has been or is being implemented in clinical PET and SPECT scanners. In 2012, he was awarded with the Bruce Hasegawa Young Investigator Medical Imaging Science Award from the IEEE Nuclear Medical and Imaging Sciences Council for “contributions to the imaging physics of SPECT/CT and PET/CT, with emphasis in quantitative imaging and motion correction”. He was the President of Physics, Instrumentation, and Data Sciences Council (PIDSC) of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) between 2022-2023, is currently the Immediate Past President of PIDSC.

James C. McPartland, Ph.D., is the Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry and Psychology at the Yale Child Study Center. He is a practicing licensed child psychologist and Director of the Yale Developmental Disabilities Clinic. Dr. McPartland is a Director of the Yale Center for Brain and Mind Health, Co-Director of Team Science at the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation, Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Child Study Center, and the Principal Investigator of the Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials, a US-based effort to identify biomarkers to support intervention research in autism. Dr. McPartland began clinical research in neurodevelopmental conditions as an undergraduate at Harvard University, graduating with High Honors in Psychology in 1996. He earned his doctoral degree in Child Clinical Psychology from the University of Washington in 2005 and completed autism-focused fellowships at the Yale Child Study Center, where he joined the faculty in 2006. Dr. McPartland’s program of research investigates the brain bases of neurodevelopmental conditions to develop biologically-based tools to improve detection, treatment, and, ultimately, the quality of life for autistic people and their families. His research has been continuously supported since 2007 by both federal (NIMH, NICHD, NINDS, NIDCD; R21, R03, K23, R01, U19) and private research grants (NARSAD, the Autism Science Foundation, the Waterloo Foundation, Autism Speaks, the Patterson Trust, the Simons Foundation, the Nancy Taylor Foundation, the Alan B. Slifka Foundation, the Hilibrand Foundation), and Spectrum named him the top-funded autism researcher for the decade 2010 to 2019. His contributions to the field have been recognized by numerous awards, including the NARSAD Atherton Young Investigator Award, the International Society for Autism Research Young Investigator Award, the Patterson Trust Clinical Research Award, the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Klerman Prize, and the APA Sara S. Sparrow Early Career Research Award, and he has been named a Fellow by two divisions of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. Dr. McPartland has published 7 books and more than 200 scholarly works on autism and related topics. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders, the Journal of Mental Health Research in Intellectual Disabilities, and the Encyclopedia of Autism and Related Disorders. Dr. McPartland is active in public scientific communication, with his clinical and research activities featured in media, such as the A&E series, The Employables, and news outlets, such as the New York Times. He has served on the executive boards of the International Society for Autism Research and the APA Division of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities/Autism Spectrum Disorder and currently chairs the Scientific Advisory Board of the Autism Science Foundation.

Dr. Ehud Mendel joined Yale in September 2021 as a Professor of Neurosurgery. He serves as the Disease Center Director of the Spine Oncology Program and member of the Executive Leadership Group at Smilow Cancer Hospital/ Yale Cancer Center at Yale New Haven Hospital. He also serves as the Division Chief of the Spine section, Neurosurgery, and the Executive Vice Chair in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Yale School of Medicine.Dr. Mendel comes to Yale from Wexner Medical Center at The Ohio State University (OSU) and the James Cancer Hospital Solove Research Institute, where he served as the director of the Spine Oncology Program and clinical director of the Ohio State University Spine Research Institute. While at OSU, Dr. Mendel led a multidisciplinary team that made incredible advances in oncological spine surgery. Among many things, his team pioneered a new surgical technique to reconstruct the spine following surgery to remove spinal tumors and has spent his career developing numerous spine tumors research protocols and spine surgery techniques. A true academic surgeon, Dr. Mendel comes to Yale with a wealth of experience in teaching, research, and clinical affairs. In 2006, he became the first honoree of The Justine Skestos Endowed Chair in Minimally Invasive Neurological Spinal Surgery and was recognized for his excellent contributions to education with the Lawrence Mervis, MD Teacher of the Year award in 2016. In addition to seeing patients, Dr. Mendel also served as vice chair for clinical affairs and was elected by his peers to the OSU University Senate and OSU Faculty Council. An honors graduate from Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans, Dr. Mendel also holds an MBA from The Ohio State University Max M. Fisher College of Business. He completed his residency at the University of Southern California Medical Center and a fellowship in reconstructive spinal surgery-combined neurosurgery/orthopedics at the University of Florida School of Medicine.From 2017 to 2019, he served as president of the Ohio State Neurosurgical Society. He is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons (FACS) and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is a member of AOA Honor’s Society and was selected for the American Academy of Neurological Surgery.

Dr. Pashankar completed his basic medical training in India and in the UK. He completed fellowship training in Pediatric Gastroenterology at BC Children's Hospital in Vancouver, Canada. He has MBA in healthcare from Yale School of Management and has expertise in process and quality improvement. His clinical and research interest is in inflammatory bowel disease in children. He is the director of Yale Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease Program. He runs a multidisciplinary Inflammatory Bowel disease clinic at Yale New Haven Children's Hospital in New Haven. He has published a number of clinical studies in quality improvement, pediatric gastroenterology and inflammatory bowel diseases. He has presented his work in many national and international conferences. In addition, he has an active administrative role in Yale medicine. As a medical director of Yale Clinical Optimization Service, he evaluated ambulatory operation of pediatric and adult medical and surgical specialties, resulting in improvement in patient workflow, revenue , patient and provider satisfaction. He is a medical director of Yale Medicine ambulatory services and oversees 40 Yale Medicine clinics in Fairfield county, New Haven and shoreline regions.

Chris Pittenger earned his MD and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, where his graduate work was done with Nobel Prize recipient Eric Kandel. He returned to Yale University, his undergraduate alma mater, for residency and research training in psychiatry in 2003. He joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2007 and is now Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry, Professor of Psychology and in the Child Study Center, and Deputy Chair for Translational Research in the Department of Psychiatry .Chris has always been fascinated by the question of how the brain, a complex but ultimately a physical structure, creates thought, feeling, consciousness, and other aspects of the mind.  As a psychiatrist he is additionally focused on how these processes go wrong - how brain dysregulation leads to dysregulated cognition, emotion, and behavior and to mental suffering, and how advancing our understanding of these relationships can guide us to new strategies to alleviate that suffering.  Much of his work has focused on obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette syndrome and on the cortico-basal ganglia circuitry that is implicated in their pathophysiology.  More recently he has co-founded the Yale Program for Psychedelic Science, focused on understanding how molecules like psilocybin and LSD can teach us about brain and behavior and may lead to new treatments for a range of neuropsychiatric pathology.  He is also one of the founding Directors of the Yale Center for Brain and Mind Health, which seeks to bridge disciplines and levels of analysis to bring new therapeutics to individuals suffering from disorders of the mind and brain.Dr. Pittenger's research and clinical work have been acknowledged by a number of prestigious awards, including grant funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke, NARSAD, the Tourette Syndrome of America, the Doris Duke Charitable Trust, and other organizations.  He has won a number of awards, including from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Society for Neuroscience, the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American College of Psychiatrists. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International OCD Foundation and Chair of both their Grant Review Committee and their Annual Research Symposium Planning Committee.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Neurological Association.

Allison Ponce earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Connecticut and completed her postdoctoral training in the Yale Department of Psychiatry before joining the faculty. She is the Director of Education and Co-Chief Wellness Officer at the Connecticut Mental Health Center. Dr. Ponce has research, administrative, and clinical interests in public mental health, particularly with regard to serious mental illness and homelessness. Another major area of focus is the education and training of psychologists and other mental health professionals. Dr. Ponce supervises psychology fellows and coordinates several seminars focused on administration, leadership, and community-based care. Dr. Ponce is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Chair of the APA's BEA/BPA Task Force on Doctoral Competencies and Co-Chair of the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC) Standards and Review Committee. She is Past-Chair of APA's Policy and Planning Board, Past-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC) and serves as an internship site visit chair for the APA's Commission on Accreditation. She also serves as Associate Editor of the APA journal Psychological Services.

Dr. Wilkins is Professor and Director of Medical Student Education in the Department of Psychiatry. She also serves as Firm Director for Integrated Care at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven, CT. Dr. Wilkins works clinically in outpatient primary care-mental health integration and geriatric psychiatry. As a clinician-educator, Dr. Wilkins is actively involved in the supervision and education of Yale medical students, PA students, and psychiatry residents and fellows. She served as the Psychiatry Clerkship Director from 2011-2019, Director of the YSM Clerkship Curriculum from 2014-2018, and Executive Director of the Yale Interprofessional Longitudinal Clinical Experience from 2018-2022. On a national level, she has long been involved with the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP), having previously served as Chair of the AAGP Teaching and Training Committee and Chair of the AAGP Scholars Program for trainees. She was Co-Chair of the 2021 AAGP Annual Meeting. Dr. Wilkins is a member of the Association for Directors of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry (ADMSEP) and was recently selected as Co-Chair of the ADMSEP Education Scholars Program.  Dr. Wilkins is board certified in General Psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, with subspecialty certification in both Geriatric Psychiatry and Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. She has co-authored several peer-reviewed publications and has presented regionally and nationally in the areas of clinical geriatric psychiatry, medical student education, learning climate, and the education of medical trainees in geriatric psychiatry. Current areas of research interest include medical education in geriatric psychiatry, learning climate, integration of mental health and primary care, health professional attitudes toward psychosocial aspects of medicine, and medical student mental health.

Donna M. Windish, MD, MPH has a passion for medical education and educational scholarship. She has created and led many programs to train fellows and faculty in educational scholarship. She founded the General Internal Medicine Medical Education Fellowship in 2016 which has produced national leaders and scholars in UME, GME and CME education. She developed a novel faculty development program in educational scholarship for Yale's Department of Internal Medicine called ACES (Advancement of Clinician Educator Scholarship). She mentored all 30 ACES participants and ran the program for 5 years. She developed a similar faculty development program for Yale School of Medicine in 2024: the Educator Scholar Fellowship. This program trains faculty who are interested in educational scholarship across all Departments of the School. Dr. Windish also established and co-leads a national education scholarship faculty development program for faculty across the country through the Society of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Windish has mentored numerous students, residents, fellows and faculty at Yale and across the country in educational scholarship initiatives. Her mentorship has been recognized nationally through the Society of General Internal Medicine who awarded her with the Frederick L. Brancati Mentorship and Leadership Award and most recently the Mid-Career Education Mentorship Award.

Dr. Dhanpat Jain is a Professor of Pathology and Internal Medicine (section of Digestive Diseases). Dr. Jain graduated from Mysore Medical College, Mysore, India and received his M.B.B.S degree in 1986. He subsequently received his M.D. Pathology degree from Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, India in 1991. He moved to the U.S. in 1995 and completed his Anatomic Pathology residency and Fellowship in Gastrointestinal Pathology at Yale University School of Medicine, and subsequently continued as a faculty there.Dr. Jain is a nationally and internationally recognized gastrointestinal pathologist known for his diagnostic skills, research and teaching. He has more than 150 publications, many book chapters, books and reviews, all of which are largely in the field of gastrointestinal and liver pathology. He has delivered many lectures and participated in many courses at the national and international level. He is on the editorial board of several high impact journals in the field of gastrointestinal and liver disorders. His area of expertise is motility disorders of the gastrointestinal tract, for which he gets cases in consultation from across the globe. Dr. Jain is an accomplished teacher and has received many awards. He has continuously been nominated for “Best Doctors in America” for many years.

Dr. Hua Xu is a well-known researcher in clinical natural language processing (NLP). He has developed novel algorithms for important clinical NLP tasks such as entity recognition and relation extraction, which have been top ranked in over a dozen of international biomedical NLP challenges. His lab has developed CLAMP, a comprehensive clinical NLP toolkit that has been successfully commercialized and used by hundreds of healthcare organizations. Moreover, he has led multiple national/international initiatives (e.g., Chair of the NLP working group at Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics - OHDSI program) to apply developed NLP technologies to diverse clinical and translational studies, thus greatly accelerating clinical evidence generation using electronic health records data. Recently, he also utilizes NLP to harmonize metadata of biomedical digital objects (e.g., indexing millions of biomedical datasets to make them findable), with the goal to promote FAIR principles in biomedicine. Currently Dr. Xu's lab is actively working on developing large language models for diverse biomedical applications. See more information about Dr. Xu's lab here.