Dr. George Lister is the new chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine, and chief at Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH), where he will also serve as physician-in-chief at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital.
Lister was a member of the department of pediatrics at the Yale-New Haven medical center for 25 years before moving to Texas in 2003. He is the Robert L. Moore Professor of Pediatrics and associate dean for education at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School (UTSW). From 2003 to 2011, he served as chair of pediatrics at UTSW and pediatrician-in-chief at the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas.
“Dr. Lister brings to this role an outstanding record of accomplishment as a physician, scientist, administrator, and mentor to several generations of academic pediatricians and pediatric researchers,” said Dr. Robert J. Alpern, dean and the Ensign Professor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine.
“As a clinician, Dr. Lister is well known and very highly regarded by members of the Yale-New Haven medical staff. He is also known to pediatricians throughout Connecticut as a highly skilled, compassionate and accessible individual,” said Marna P. Borgstrom, CEO at YNHH. “He is perfectly poised to lead a children’s hospital whose national reputation is rapidly rising.”
Lister graduated from Brown University and received his M.D. from Yale School of Medicine. He completed his pediatric residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital, followed by a fellowship in pediatric cardiology and neonatology at the University of California-San Francisco. There, Lister began research that led to his specialization in critical care medicine, a field in its formative stages at the time. He returned to Yale-New Haven in 1978, where he rose to professor of pediatrics and anesthesiology, founded the section of critical care and applied physiology at Yale-New Haven, and was its chief for more than 20 years. He also created a pediatric critical care fellowship program, which has trained a generation of pediatric critical care physicians across the country.
Lister’s longstanding research interest in oxygen transport has contributed significantly to the understanding of cardiopulmonary interaction in congenital heart disease and cardiorespiratory control in infants at risk for sudden infant death syndrome. Throughout his career, Lister has also played an active role in medical education, for which he has received national recognition. A member of the Institute of Medicine, he has had numerous national leadership roles in pediatric professional organizations and is co-editor of the 21st and 22nd editions of "Rudolph’s Pediatrics," one of the most widely read pediatric textbooks in the world.