Margaret McGovern, MD, PhD

Margaret McGovern, MD, PhD, is deputy dean for clinical affairs and chief executive officer of Yale Medicine, the clinical practice of Yale School of Medicine. In that role, she leads a rapidly growing multispecialty medical practice with more than 1,600 full-time and part-time physicians.

Before joining Yale, Dr. McGovern was Knapp Professor of Pediatrics and dean for clinical affairs at Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, and vice president of Stony Brook Medicine Health System clinical programs and strategy. Prior to assuming those roles in 2018, she was chair of Pediatrics and physician-in-chief at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital. She led the development and planning of Stony Brook Children’s Hospital and significantly expanded its pediatric clinical research and education programs.

Dr. McGovern received her PhD in genetics from the Mount Sinai Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and her MD from Mount Sinai School of Medicine (now called Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai). She completed her residency in pediatrics and fellowships in clinical and molecular genetics at Mount Sinai Hospital before joining the faculty. At Icahn School of Medicine, she was vice chair of the Department of Genetics and Molecular Medicine and professor of human genetics, and of oncological sciences and obstetrics and gynecology.

She also was program director for the NIH-funded General Clinical Research Center and carried out CDC- and NIH-funded research focused primarily on the integration of molecular genetic diagnostic testing into clinical practice and inborn errors of metabolism. Dr. McGovern is considered a world authority on sphingolipidoses, a heterogeneous group of inherited disorders of lipid metabolism primarily affecting the central nervous system and chiefly occurring in the pediatric population.