Kaminski to Step Down as Yale-PCCSM Section Chief in June 2026

When Naftali Kaminski, MD, was recruited to Yale in 2013 as section chief of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine (Yale-PCCSM) he planned to lead it for 10 years. Now, coming up on his thirteenth year, he is stepping down at the end of June 2026.

Reflecting on more than a decade, he remembers the serendipitous moment that brought him to Yale.

Kaminski was at an American Thoracic Society (ATS) conference and ran into the Department of Internal Medicine chair at the time, Jack Elias, MD, in an elevator. He asked Elias how the Yale-PCCSM section chief search process was going. Kaminski had previously been approached about the role, but declined the invitation to apply because he was content at the University of Pittsburgh.

During that elevator ride, Elias asked Kaminski if he would be interested in coming to Yale for a visit. This mere happenstance led Kaminski to tour the medical school campus, and that’s when his love for New Haven and Yale blossomed.

Although Kaminski had been to campus before to visit Michal Rose, MD, a friend from residency, he recounts how impressed he was with the people and how struck he was with their talent and commitment. He described his experience as warm and friendly–a feeling he still has every day.

“That’s when I fell in love, and decided to apply,” says Kaminski. “I mention this serendipitous elevator meeting frequently in my talks about career. People think they should follow a plan, but my experience has been to keep an open mind—and open door—for serendipity.”

Now he says, smiling, it’s time for someone else to lead Yale-PCCSM.

Under Kaminski’s leadership, the section has expanded dramatically across every dimension of its mission. The section’s clinical programs, research funding, and educational programs have expanded substantially in size, scope, and impact.

Since 2013, the section’s clinical footprint has expanded with the establishment of both the Winchester Center for Lung Disease and Yale New Haven Sleep Centers. These centers made Yale a national destination for common and rare disorders alike. Additionally, both York Street Campus and Saint Raphael Campus MICUs and the tele-ICU grew, establishing Yale as one of the nation's largest medical intensive care programs.

Jonathan Siner, MD, associate professor (pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine) and clinical section chief, mentions how Kaminski cares deeply about the ambulatory and inpatient clinical care that Yale-PCCSM provides.

“During the pandemic, he firmly insisted we proceed with developing the new North Haven ambulatory site, Winchester Center for Lung Disease,” Siner states. “This led to an enormous expansion in clinical volume and concomitant ability to provide advanced pulmonary care to patients.”

Siner adds that Kaminski’s enthusiastic leadership has had a similar impact on the Sleep and Critical Care programs, which have also grown significantly with increased specialization.

These efforts substantially increased access to care for patients with pulmonary diseases in the region. The total outpatient visits reached over 20,000 in 2025, which is a 30% increase from the year prior, and double the amount of visits compared to 2019. In 2025, nearly 4,000 new patients were seen at the Winchester Center for Lung Disease, compared to around 1,800 in 2021.

Access to care has been a priority for Kaminski. “Many patients with chronic lung disease experience delayed diagnoses or sub-optimal care. By expanding our services, we provided more opportunity to be seen by some of the best pulmonary clinicians in the nation,” he emphasizes.

In addition, the section’s research repertoire also broadened with the creation of new research centers and programs, nearly doubling research funding and more than tripling scholarly productivity. Publications soared from an average of 30 papers published per year to more than 150 published annually since 2020.

“Under Dr. Kaminski’s leadership, the research ecosystem within Yale-PCCSM has expanded dramatically across the full spectrum of translational science,” says Henry Klar Yaggi, MD, MPH, professor of medicine (pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine) and vice chief of research. “He has spearheaded the development of novel centers in precision medicine, bioinformatics, sleep and respiratory neurobiology, translational lung biology, lung injury and inflammation, ICU outcomes in older adults, and experimental lung biology.”

Yaggi says that Kaminski’s commitment has ensured the continued support of the NHLBI T32 in translational lung biology and pathobiology, while also driving a remarkable increase in K awards and early-stage investigators successfully securing R01 funding.

When Kaminski started in the role, the T32 training grant was focused on bench research. After shifting focus and expanding the translational and multidisciplinary nature of the grant, a new generation of successful clinician-researchers was born. In the last three years, Yale-PCCSM has welcomed six new early-stage investigator R01s.

“It has been an absolute pleasure to work alongside him in building this infrastructure, which has positioned our section at the forefront of discovery and innovation,” Yaggi says.

When asked what he’s most proud of during his tenure, Kaminski points to the diversification of disciplines and subspecialties, including the development of new programs.

One such program, the Research to Improve ICU Outcomes Among Older Adults (RECOVER) Program, was established during Kaminski’s tenure. Created by Lauren Ferrante, MD, MHS, the RECOVER program bridges critical care medicine and geriatrics, with a focus on improving the outcomes of older adults who survive critical illness.

“As I developed this line of aging-focused work and grew my program, Naftali was always an enthusiastic supporter and advocate for my research,” says Ferrante, associate professor of medicine (pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine). Ferrante notes that Kaminski encourages faculty, especially early-career investigators, in their development of new ideas and research.

Vivian Asare, MD, associate professor of medicine (pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine) and vice chief for collaborative excellence in Yale-PCCSM, who has worked with Kaminski on equity and inclusion initiatives since 2021, echoes the sentiment.

"Dr. Kaminski not only truly valued my opinions, but also supported my ideas and vision for growth in our section,” she says. “He was wholeheartedly excited about projects and initiatives that we collaborated on together.”

Asare adds that Kaminski is a leader who supports, encourages, and empowers his staff and faculty, many of whom are award-winning, world leaders in research, education, and clinical care. She says he has inspired and recruited this dynamic and successful group of faculty to do great things.

With 80 members currently, the faculty has nearly doubled since 2013. Currently, 56% of ladder-track faculty are female; 57% of senior faculty members are female, including eight women who are professors.

Kaminski also shares that he is equally as proud of the career development of trainees and faculty, noting how Yale-PCCSM is a destination program–not only for patients, but also for faculty and trainees as well.

The increasing need in subspecialization led to the growth and diversification of educational options available to trainees at Yale-PCCSM. Yale-PCCSM now offers five fellowship programs, including the three to four-year Pulmonary and Critical Care fellowship with nearly 20 fellows; a dedicated fellowship in Sleep Medicine with four fellows; a Critical Care fellowship made up of six fellows; as well as an Interventional Pulmonology fellowship—both with one fellow. The number of trainees has also more than doubled in the last decade because of the fellowship expansion. Roughly 60% of current early career faculty, and many of the section’s leaders, were Yale-PCCSM fellows.

What was most important to Kaminski when he first started—and still to this day—was creating and maintaining a safe and pleasant collaborative ecosystem. His vision was simple.

“While we need to be outstanding in clinical care, education, and research, we also need to be a place where people can work and live,” Kaminski says, referring to the last sentence of Yale-PCCSM’s mission: We aim to fulfill this mission in the best atmosphere possible—with a focus on work life balance, equity, community, and engagement.

And he has done just that. Asare and Ferrante mention that he cultivated a positive teamwork environment. Asare adds that Kaminski made it a priority to bring people together, whether for in-person faculty meetings, yearly faculty retreats, or section-wide celebrations and dinners.

Reflecting on his tenure, Kaminski does not measure the success of the section by what he has accomplished but by the collective success of all its members.

“Yale-PCCSM is more robust than ever before," Kaminski says. “This is one of the best jobs in the country, and I look forward to welcoming the next leader.”

Kaminski will remain at Yale as the Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Endowed Professor of Medicine. As an internationally renowned expert in pulmonary fibrosis, genomics of lung disease, systems biology, and biomarker and drug discovery, he will continue researching, mentoring, and teaching.

“I’d like to focus on leading the training around the next generation of physician-scientists and general researchers,” says Kaminski.

As one of the pioneers of implementation of high throughput technologies to pulmonary research, Kaminski is fascinated by the impact of novel technologies. In recent years his group’s application of single cell RNA profiling technologies has led to the discovery of a novel population of cells called aberrant basaloid cells, that may be key players in pulmonary fibrosis, as well as many other cell types.

“Over the last five years, my lab members were among those who have shifted the paradigm of pulmonary fibrosis to a disease,” he says.

Beyond expanding his work on these cells, their roles in fibrosis, potentially methods to target them therapeutically, Kaminski also wishes to implement novel approaches to virtually model human pulmonary fibrosis.

The creation of such models, often called ‘digital twins,’ will be Kaminski’s focus in the next few years. The causal inference models will use Artificial intelligence (AI) to simulate disease in the lung silico. The model will predict the effects of new medications, biomarkers, and disease progression. He says their research is trying to accelerate the development of new medications that will not only slow down pulmonary fibrosis, but actually reverse it.

“Using the detailed, single cell resolution and spatial information we get, and the emergence of regenerative AI, we could create predictive models of the behavior of whole organs to predict how fibrosis emerges, and what would be the effect of drugs.”

Additionally, Kaminski looks forward to continuing to mentor and teach. While he never planned to become a section chief, he loved the career development aspect and watching colleagues grow.

“It does not matter if the person eventually develops to be a clinician, an educator, a researcher, or an administrator, as a chief, you see them from early on as fellows and early career faculty. You first think of ways to allow them to express their talents, then see them develop, and watch them mature as professionals. It’s almost like being both a college and an NBA coach,” says Kaminski, a basketball fan of several teams, including Yale Basketball.

Kaminski is also looking forward to getting involved in pulmonary fibrosis patient advocacy and support groups once again.

“Many people don’t believe me when I tell them I keep my Facebook account just for pulmonary fibrosis patients,” he says. Kaminski keeps in touch with patients from all over the country that he met over the span of two decades. The social media platform has helped create an interactive community with patients, family members, and experts.

Connecting with patient advocacy and support groups is especially fulfilling for Kaminski. He values building relationships and the ability to provide transparent scientific and clinical updates on the disease, and working together to influence policy.

Other passions he is eager to return to include human rights and health justice and advocacy work, reading more scientific journals, and writing.

Knowing that circumstances and situations can change, Kaminski remains open-minded: “We’ll see what other opportunities emerge.”

The Section of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine is one of the 10 sections within the Yale Department of Internal Medicine. To learn more about Yale-PCCSM, visit PCCSM's website, or follow them on Facebook and X/Twitter.