Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Former names	Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Type	Private medical school
Established	1963 (1963)
Parent institution	Mount Sinai Health System
Endowment	$1.7 billion (2017)
Dean	Dennis S. Charney
President & CEO	Kenneth L. Davis
Academic staff	1,650+ full-time 6,000+ total
Students	560+ MD students 90+ MD/PhD students 270+ PhD students
Location	New York City , New York , United States
Campus	Urban
Website	icahn.mssm.edu

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS or Mount Sinai), formerly the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is a private medical school in New York City, New York, United States. The school is the academic teaching arm of the Mount Sinai Health System, which manages eight hospital campuses in the New York metropolitan area, including Mount Sinai Hospital and the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.

The school is a teaching hospital first conceived in 1958. Due to simultaneous expansion initiatives at the hospital, classes did not begin until 1968. Its name was changed to The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2012, after a $200 million grant from businessman Carl Icahn.

Post-graduate academics are focused on biomedical sciences and public health. Its campus is located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, stretching from East 98th Street to East 102nd Street.

As of 2024, school is ranked #40 in Best Global Hospitals.

History

As Mount Sinai School of Medicine

The first official proposal to establish a medical school at Mount Sinai was made to the hospital's trustees in January 1958. The school contemplated a new kind of medical institution encompassing a medical school supported by a teaching hospital. It would include an undergraduate school representing allied health fields, a graduate school of biological sciences, and a graduate school of physical sciences.

This philosophy was defined by Hans Popper, Horace Hodes, Alexander Gutman, Paul Klemperer, George Baehr, Gustave L. Levy, and Alfred Stern, among others. Milton Steinbach was the school's first president.

Classes at Mount Sinai School of Medicine began in 1968, and the school soon became known as one of the leading medical schools in the U.S., as the hospital gained recognition for its laboratories, advances in patient care and the discovery of diseases. The City University of New York granted Mount Sinai's degrees.

Mount Sinai's degrees were granted by City University of New York. before 1999, when Mount Sinai changed university affiliations from City University to New York University but without merging its operations with the New York University School of Medicine. This affiliation change took place as part of the merger in 1998 of Mount Sinai and NYU medical centers to create the Mount Sinai–NYU Medical Center and Health System. In 2003, the partnership between the two dissolved.

In 2007, Mount Sinai Medical Center's boards of trustees approved the termination of the academic affiliation between Mount Sinai and NYU and it was officially terminated in 2008. In 2010, Mount Sinai was accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and became an independent degree-granting institution.

As Icahn School of Medicine

On November 14, 2012, it was announced that Mount Sinai School of Medicine would be renamed Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, following a US$200 million gift from New York businessman and philanthropist Carl Icahn.

Campus

The 18-story Icahn Institute provides 350,000 sf of laboratory, treatment, and education space for the School of Medicine. The campus is located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, stretching from East 98th Street to East 102nd Street.

Partnerships and affiliations

In 2015, Mount Sinai announced partnerships with The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia as well as National Jewish Health, the nation's leading institutes for pediatric and pulmonary care respectively, leading to the creation of the Mount Sinai Children’s Heart Center and the Mount Sinai – National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute.

COVID response

The first diagnosed COVID-19 case in New York City was by Mount Sinai emergency department's Dr. Angela Chen.

In March 2020, Elmhurst Hospital Center, the public hospital that serves as a major training site for Mount Sinai students and residents, was the epicenter of New York City's initial COVID-19 surge, with Mount Sinai house staff and faculty serving as the city's first front-line workers treating patients infected with coronavirus. Mount Sinai has since established itself at the forefront of research to understand and treat COVID-19, being named a lead site in a $470 million study to examine the long-term effects of COVID-19.

Controversy

In April 2019, the Icahn School was named in a lawsuit filed against Mount Sinai Health System and several employees of the Icahn School's Arnhold Institute for Global Health. The suit was filed by eight current and former employees for "age and sex discrimination as well as improper reporting to funding agencies, misallocation of funds, failing to obtain Institutional Review Board approval prior to conducting research in violation of Mount Sinai and federal guidelines, and failing properly to adhere to the guidelines of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA." The school denies the claims. More than 150 students at the Icahn School and more than 400 Icahn and Mount Sinai Health System faculty have signed letters, addressed to the Board of Trustees, calling on the system to investigate these allegations.

Academics

Icahn Medical Institute at ISMMS, built in 1997 and designed by Davis Brody Bond.

Mount Sinai's medical curriculum is based on the standard program of medical education in the United States: the first two years of study are confined to the medical sciences, the latter to the study of clinical sciences. The first and second years are strictly pass/fail; the third and fourth years feature clinical rotations at Mount Sinai Hospital (Manhattan) and Elmhurst Hospital Center, a major level 1 trauma center and safety-net hospital known for being situated in the "most ethnically diverse community in the world," serving an area of one million people with recent immigrants encompassing 112 different countries. Other clerkship and residency training sites include the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, Mount Sinai Hospital of Queens, James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx, Mount Sinai West, Mount Sinai Morningside, and Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital.

Mount Sinai's faculty as of 2022 includes 23 elected members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and 40 members of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

In the 2023-2024 term, the MD program matriculated 120 students from 8,514 applicants. The median undergraduate GPA of matriculants was reportedly 3.84, and the median Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) score at that time was in 95th percentile, but those admitted through the early-admissions program do not take the MCAT.

The Medical Scientist Training Program is currently training over 90 MD/PhD students. As one of the most selective medical schools in the U.S., Mount Sinai received 8,276 applications for approximately 140 MD and MD/PhD positions for the 2021–2022 academic year.

Admissions

Applicants are required to have a bachelor's degree, a competitive MCAT score, and coursework including biology, physics, English and chemistry. A cumulative GPA above is 3.5 is reportedly required. Individual educational programs are accredited through the appropriate bodies, including but not limited to LCME, CEPH, ACCME and ACGME.

College freshmen or sophomores can approach admissions through the FlexMed Program allowing them to apply for early acceptance regardless of prior majors.

Programs

The school only offers graduate degrees:

• Doctor of Medicine (MD): A four-year program comprising two years of classroom and laboratory instruction and two years of clinical rotations.
• PhD Programs in Biomedical Sciences: The subjects include genetics and genomic sciences, neuroscience, microbiology, immunology, pharmacology, and physiology.
• Master of Public Health (MPH) Program: A two-year program focused on preventing and managing diseases at the population level.
• Combined degree programs: Students can earn their MD and another degree through programs such as MD/PhD, MD/MPH, and MD/Master of Science in Clinical Research.

Community service

Mount Sinai's four-pronged missions (quality education, patient care, research, and community service) follow the "commitment of serving science," and the majority of students actively participate in some aspect of community service. This participation includes The East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership, which the students of Mount Sinai developed to create a health partnership with the East Harlem community, providing quality health care, regardless of ability to pay, to uninsured residents of East Harlem.

Rankings

ISMMS was named #46 in global university rankings as determined by U.S. News & World Report for 2022-2023. Rankings by subject for the same period include:

Ranking	Subject
59	Biology and Biochemistry
7	Cardiac and Cardiovascular Systems
8	Cell Biology
24	Clinical Medicine
59	Endocrinology and Metabolism
6	Gastroenterology and Hepatology
17	Immunology
147	Infectious Diseases
29	Microbiology
11	Molecular Biology and Genetics
25	Neuroscience and Behavior
53	Oncology
103	Pharmacology and Toxicology
41	Psychiatry/Psychology
36	Public, Environmental and Occupational Health
18	Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Medical Imaging
190	Social Sciences and Public Health
46	Surgery

• Mount Sinai was ranked 11th overall among research-based medical schools in the 2023 edition of U.S. News & World Report.
• The Mount Sinai Hospital, the teaching hospital of ISMMS, was listed in the 2022 edition of U.S. News & World Report Honor Roll, with multiple specialties ranked in the top 20 nationwide (geriatrics #1, cardiology #6, endocrinology #10, neurology & neurosurgery #10, orthopedics #14, rehabilitation #14, gastroenterology #15, urology #16, pulmonology #20). The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked #14 in ophthalmology.
• Mount Sinai was ranked 8th among medical schools in the U.S. receiving NIH grants in 2022, and 2nd in research dollars per principal investigator among U.S. medical schools by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

Publications

The Annals of Global Health was founded at Mount Sinai in 1934, then known as the Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine. Levy Library Press publishes The Journal of Scientific Innovation in Medicine.

Notable people

Alumni

• Jacob M. Appel, novelist and short story author
• Michael Arthur, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds
• Ambati Balamurali, the youngest person ever to become a doctor, according to Guinness Book of Records
• Inna Berin, obstetrician and gynecologist
• Tamir Bloom, Olympic epee fencer
• Robert Neil Butler, physician, gerontologist, psychiatrist, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and the first director of the National Institute on Aging
• Sophie Clarke, winner of Survivor: South Pacific
• Sandra Fong, Olympic sport shooter
• Jeffrey Scott Flier, dean of the Harvard Medical School  
• Scott L. Friedman, president of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and pioneering researcher in the field of hepatic fibrosis  
• Janice Gabrilove, hematologist-oncologist and inventor of patent describing initial isolation and characterization of human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF)
• Rivka Galchen, award winning author
• Steven K. Galson, former Surgeon General of the United States
• Stuart Gitlow, former president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine
• René Kahn, neuropsychiatrist (schizophrenia, neuroimaging), Klingenstein Professor
• Arnold Martin Katz, the first Philip J. and Harriet L. Goodhart Professor of Medicine (Cardiology), and author of Physiology of the Heart
• Jeffrey P. Koplan, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• Herminia Palacio, class of 1987, Deputy Mayor of New York City under Bill de Blasio under Bill de Blasio and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute  
• John Rowe, CEO and executive chairman of Aetna from 2000 to 2006
• Charles Schleien, pediatrician and medical researcher
• René Simard, co-author of On Being Human: Where Ethics, Medicine and Spirituality Converge
• Benjamin (Benji) Ungar (born 1986), NCAA-champion fencer

Faculty

• Stuart A. Aaronson, internationally recognized cancer biologist and the Jane B. and Jack R. Aron Professor of Neoplastic Diseases and chairman of Oncological Sciences
• Judith Aberg, infectious disease researcher, George Baehr Professor of Clinical Medicine and Dean of System Operations for Clinical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
• David H. Adams, co-creator of the Carpentier-McCarthy-Adams IMR ETlogix Ring and the Carpentier-Edwards Physio II degenerative annuloplasty ring
• Joshua B. Bederson, professor and chief of neurosurgery and the first neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai to receive an NIH R01 grant as principal investigator
• Solomon Berson, American physician and scientist whose discoveries, mostly together with Rosalyn Yalow, caused major advances in clinical biochemistry ISBN 0-309-04198-8
• Deepak L. Bhatt, American interventional cardiologist known for novel clinical trials in cardiovascular prevention, intervention, and heart failure.
• Michael J. Bronson, associate professor of orthopaedic surgery and creator of the Vision Total Hip System
• Michael L. Brodman, chair and professor of the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science and pioneer in the field of urogynecology
• Steven J. Burakoff, cancer specialist, author of both Therapeutic Immunology (2001) and Graft-Vs.-Host Disease: Immunology, Pathophysiology, and Treatment (1990), and the director of Mount Sinai Hospital's Cancer Institute
• Alain F. Carpentier, hailed by the president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery as the father of modern mitral valve repair
• Thomas C. Chalmers, known for his role in the development of the randomized controlled trial and meta-analysis in medical research
• Dennis S. Charney, current dean of the school and expert in the neurobiology and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders
• Michelle Copeland, D.M.D., M.D., assistant clinical professor of surgery, particularly known for her expertise on ankle liposuction and the treatment of gynecomastia
• Kenneth L. Davis, chairman and chief executive officer of Mount Sinai Medical Center, who developed what is now the most widely used tool to test the efficacy of treatments for Alzheimer's disease
• Charles DeLisi, former professor and chair of biomathematical sciences and professor of molecular biology who launched the Human Genome Project
• Burton Drayer, president of Mount Sinai Hospital (2003–2008) and president of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA)
• Marta Filizola, computational biophysicist, dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
• Raja M. Flores, thoracic surgeon and chief of the Division of Thoracic Surgery, was instrumental in creating VATS lobectomy as the standard in the surgical treatment of lung cancer
• Valentín Fuster, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the only cardiologist to receive all four major research awards from the world's four major cardiovascular organizations, and among the first to demonstrate that acute coronary events arise from small plaques
• Janice Gabrilove, hematologist-oncologist and inventor of patent describing initial isolation and characterization of human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF)
• Eric M. Genden, professor and chairman of the department of otolaryngology, who performed the first successful jaw transplant in New York State
• Isabelle M. Germano, professor of neurosurgery, neurology, oncological sciences pioneer of image-guided neurosurgery, radiosurgery, and gene therapy for brain tumors
• Stuart Gitlow, former president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and executive director of the Annenberg Physician Training Program in Addictive Diseases
• Alison Goate, director of the Loeb Center for Alzheimer's disease
• Randall B. Griepp, professor of cardiothoracic surgery who collaborated with Norman Shumway in the development of the first successful heart transplant procedures in the U.S.
• Jack Peter Green, founding professor and chairman of the department of pharmacology; expert in molecular pharmacology; established the first methods for measuring acetylcholine (ACh) in the brain, and the evidence for histamine as a neurotransmitter
• Alon Harris, inventor and co-principal investigator on The Thessaloniki Eye Study, reportedly ophthalmology's largest population-based study
• Andrew C. Hecht, assistant professor of both orthopaedic surgery and neurosurgery and spine surgical consultant to the New York Jets, the New York Islanders and the New York Dragons
• Horace Hodes, former Herbert H. Lehman Professor and chairman of pediatrics
• Ravi Iyengar, professor and founder of the Iyengar Laboratory, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
• Ethylin Wang Jabs, pediatrician and medical geneticist who identified the first human mutation in a homeobox-containing gene
• Andy S. Jagoda, professor and chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine and editor or author of 13 books, including The Good Housekeeping Family First Aid Book (ISBN 0-688-17894-4) and the textbook Neurologic Emergencies (ISBN 0-07-140292-6)
• René Kahn, neuropsychiatrist (schizophrenia, neuroimaging), Klingenstein Professor
• Annapoorna Kini, associate professor of cardiology and co-author of Definitions of Acute Coronary Syndromes in Hurst's The Heart
• Daniel M. Labow, chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology and associate professor of surgery and surgical oncology, reputable for his work with cytoreductive and intraperitoneal hyperthermic chemoperfusion (HIPEC)
• Philip J. Landrigan, advocate of children's health
• Jeffrey Laitman, anatomist and physical anthropologist, distinguished professor of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, professor and director of the Center for Anatomy and Functional Morphology, professor of otolaryngology and professor of medical education
• Mark G. Lebwohl, the Sol and Clara Kest Professor and chairman of the department of dermatology and author of leading book on dermatologic therapy, Treatment of Skin Disease (ISBN 0-323-03603-1).
• I Michael Leitman, professor of surgery and dean for graduate medical education
• Ihor R. Lemischka, an internationally recognized stem cell biologist and stem cell research advocate
• Derek LeRoith, chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Bone Disease and director of the Metabolism Institute and the first to demonstrate the link between insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and cancer
• Blair Lewis, clinical professor of gastroenterology and instrumental in developing the International Conference of Capsule Endoscopy's consensus statement for clinical application of the capsule endoscopy
• Barry A. Love, cardiologist specializing in pediatric and congenital heart problems and director of Mount Sinai's Congenital Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and director of the Pediatric Electrophysiology Service
• Henry Zvi Lothane, clinical professor, internationally recognized psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and historian of psychoanalysis
• Michael L. Marin, professor and chairman of the department of surgery, the first in the U.S. to perform minimally invasive aortic aneurysm surgery and one of the first to perform a successful stent graft procedure
• Sean E. McCance, clinical professor of orthopaedics and listed as one of the "Best Doctors" for spinal fusion in Money magazine
• Roxana Mehran, interventional cardiologist
• Diane E. Meier, geriatrician and MacArthur Fellow, 2008
• Marek Mlodzik, chair of the Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, professor of oncological sciences and ophthalmology
• David Muller, co-founder of the Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors Program, the largest academic physician home visiting program in the U.S.
• Eric J. Nestler, dean for academic and scientific affairs and director of the Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York
• Paul J. Kenny, chairman of the Nash Family Department of Neuroscience and director of the Drug Discovery Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York
• Michael Palese, medical director of the department of urology and among the few surgeons in the U.S. trained in open, laparoscopic and robotic kidney procedures.
• Peter Palese, expert on influenza
• Giulio Maria Pasinetti, Saunders Family Chair and Professor of Neurology. Program director, Center for Molecular Integrative Neuroresilience at the Icahn School of Medicine
• Sean P. Pinney, director of both the Advanced Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplant Program and the Pulmonary Hypertension Program
• John Puskas, first totally thoracoscopic bilateral pulmonary vein isolation procedure and co-editor of ''State of the Art Surgical Coronary Revascularization the first textbook solely devoted to coronary artery surgery.
• Kristjan T. Ragnarsson, physiatrist and professor and chair of rehabilitation medicine with an international reputation in the rehabilitation of individuals with disorders of the central nervous system
• David L. Reich, president and chief operating officer of the Mount Sinai Hospital, chairman of the department of anesthesiology, and a pioneer in the use of electronic medical records
• Joy S. Reidenberg, Professor of Anatomy, starred in many TV documentaries on PBS, BBC, CBC, SBS, NatGeo, Science Channel, Discovery, Channel 4 (UK), and many other networks, including Inside Nature's Giants, Sex in the Wild, Born in the Wild, Mythical Beasts, Lost Beasts Unearthed, Whale Detective, Humpback Whale: A Detective Story, Brave New World with Stephen Hawking, Big Blue Live, Wild Alaska Live, When Whales Could Walk, Mystery of the Walking Whale, etc.
• Elisa Rush Port, director and co-founder of the Dubin Breast Center at Mount Sinai Health System
• Eric Schadt, computational biologist, dean for precision medicine
• Alan L. Schiller, professor and chair of the department of pathology and member of the board of directors of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute
• Bernd Schröppel, transplant nephrologist and assistant professor of nephrology
• Stuart C. Sealfon, identified the primary structure of the gonadotropin-releasing hormone receptor
• Aryeh Shander, recognized in 1997 by Time magazine as one of America's "Heroes of Medicine"
• Joseph Sonnabend, physician, scientist and HIV/AIDS researcher, notable for pioneering community-based research, the propagation of safe sex to prevent infection, and an early and unconventional multifactorial model of AIDS
• Filip Swirski, professor, researcher and scientist, known for novel findings in linking atherosclerosis with blood monocytosis
• I. Michael Leitman, surgeon and dean for graduate medical education, professor, Department of Medical Education, professor, Department of Surgery
• Samuel Waxman, Distinguished Service Professor of Oncological Science

External links

• Official website