For Yale’s renowned M.D./Ph.D. Program, a changing of the guard

The School of Medicine’s Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), known on campus as the M.D./Ph.D. Program, has undergone a change in leadership for only the fifth time in its 45-year history. James D. Jamieson, M.D., Ph.D., professor of cell biology and the program’s director for more than 30 years, stepped down this past summer. His successor is Barbara Kazmierczak, M.D., Ph.D.

Kazmierczak, associate professor of medicine and microbial pathogenesis, earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Chicago, and her M.D./Ph.D. at the Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan-Kettering Tri-Institutional Program. She completed residency and fellowship training at the University of California-San Francisco.

Kazmierczak has studied the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa extensively, focusing on bacterial factors important for establishment of disease and on host responses to infection. She came to Yale in 2001 and has served as director of graduate admissions for the microbiology track and as associate director for basic science of the M.D./Ph.D. Program.

Established in 1969, the M.D./Ph.D. Program graduated its first students in 1971. Jamieson led the program from 1974 to the present, with the exception of the years 1983 to 1992, when he chaired the Department of Cell Biology. The program’s extraordinary success under Jamieson is reflected by its 40 years of continuous support by the National Institutes of Health.