Pediatric neurologist is new associate dean for YSM admissions

Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology Laura R. Ment, M.D., has been named associate dean for admissions and chair of the admissions committee at the School of Medicine, effective July 1. Ment succeeds Professor of Cell Biology Thomas L. Lentz, M.D., who will step down on June 30 after serving for 38 years in the medical school’s Office of Admissions.

Ment, an authority on recovery of function after injury to the developing brain, is the author of more than 150 scholarly articles, including a 2003 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association that provided some of the first evidence that cognitive deficits associated with low birth weight diminish in the majority of children by age 8.

Since arriving at Yale in 1979, Ment has made her mark as a gifted teacher. She has received the Francis Gilman Blake Award, the Leah Lowenstein Award and the Class of 2006 Teaching Award, and in 2003 she was inducted into the Society of Distinguished Teachers.

Ment earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Brown University, and received her medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine in 1973. She completed her neurology residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and a fellowship at Hammersmith Hospital in London, England.

In September 2005, Ment was appointed to the 18-member National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council, the major advisory panel of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.