Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

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 seven hospital campuses in the New York metropolitan area, including Mount Sinai Hospital and the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. As of 2025, Eric J. Nestler is the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Brendan Carr serves as the President and & CEO.

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Former names	Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Type	Private medical school
Established	1963; 62 years ago (1963)
Parent institution	Mount Sinai Health System
Endowment	$866 million (2023)
Dean	Eric J. Nestler, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
CEO, Mount Sinai Health System	Brendan Carr
Academic staff	4,560+
Students	530+ MD students 340+ PhD students 90+ MD/PhD students
Location	New York City , New York , United States
Campus	Urban
Website	icahn.mssm.edu

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 initial name, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, was changed to The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2012, after a $200 million grant from businessman Carl Icahn.

Academics programs include MD, PhD and dual degrees, and its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences offers 13 degree-granting programs, conducts basic and translational research, and trains postdoctoral research fellows. Its campus is located on Manhattan's Upper East Side, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, stretching from East 98th Street to East 102nd Street.

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.

The school expanded programs and added a range of dedicated departments in the subsequent decades. The Edith J. Baerwald Professor of Community Medicine and Social Work (1969); the first Department of Neoplastic Diseases in an American medical school (1973); and the first Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development (1982).

In the 1990s, it created the Cultural Diversity in Medicine Program focused on healthcare availability to diverse patient populations. It was the second institution in the New York Metropolitan area to create an Academic Department of Emergency Medicine (1994), it started the Institute for Gene Therapy and Molecular Medicine (1996), and an Office of Multi-cultural and Community Affairs to add diversity to the demographic composition of the school (1998). In collaboration with the Pew Charitable Trust, the Center for Children's Health and the Environment was formed to examine links between childhood illnesses and toxic pollutants (1999).

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.

Academics

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai offers MDs, and graduate studies through its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Doctoral offerings include PhD programs in Biomedical Sciences, Neuroscience, Clinical Research, and Health Sciences Engineering, along with an NIH-funded MD–PhD program; master's programs include Biomedical Science, Public Health, Clinical Research, and Health Administration.

As of the 2024–25 academic year, 1,261 students were enrolled across the MD, PhD, MD–PhD, and master's tracks; the school also supported 565 postdoctoral research fellows and more than 2,700 residents and fellows in 150+ GME programs affiliated with the Mount Sinai Health System. Research training spans more than 350 laboratories and 48 research, educational, and clinical institutes. Icahn is institutionally accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, with additional programmatic accreditations listed for specific degrees.

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 The Mount Sinai Hospital 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 2025 includes 27 elected members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and 41 members of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

In the 2024–2025 term, the MD program matriculated 119 students from 8,540 applicants. The median undergraduate GPA of matriculants was reportedly 3.93. The Medical Scientist Training Program in 2025 is training over 90 MD/PhD students.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Research centers and institutes

The School organizes much of its research through interdisciplinary centers and institutes that link basic science, clinical care, and population health across the Mount Sinai Health System.

As part of the Mount Sinai Tisch Cancer Center, The Tisch Cancer Institute is the School's National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. The institute unites investigators in basic, clinical, and population sciences to support cancer prevention, treatment, and survivorship research, and is one of a network of NCI-designated centers that conduct peer-reviewed cancer research and provide access to clinical trials and community outreach programs.

Neurological and psychiatric research is coordinated through the Friedman Brain Institute (FBI), an interdisciplinary center for studies of the brain and nervous system. The institute was established following a US$20 million gift from Goldman Sachs executive Richard A. Friedman and Susan P. Friedman to create a research program focused on Alzheimer's disease, autism spectrum disorders, depression, schizophrenia, and related conditions. The Friedman Brain Institute works with departments such as neurology, psychiatry, and neurosurgery and supports basic, translational, and clinical research programs in the neurosciences.

The Marc and Jennifer Lipschultz Precision Immunology Institute (PrIISM) coordinates disease-focused immunology laboratories and technology cores and pursues precision-medicine approaches to immune-mediated diseases across cancer, neurodegeneration, atherosclerosis, and aging.

Founded in 2013, the Institute for Exposomic Research at Mount Sinai has been described as one of the first institutes devoted to systematic exposome research, examining how mixtures of nutritional, chemical, and social exposures shape disease risk across the life course and supporting large-scale studies of metals and other early-life hazards.

The Mindich Child Health and Development Institute serves as a translational research enterprise focused on the biologic, environmental, and social drivers of child health, including new initiatives in artificial-intelligence–enabled pediatrics and critical care.

Global and digital health initiatives include the Arnhold Institute for Global Health, which conducts health-systems and implementation research in partnership with institutions such as NYC Health + Hospitals and administers pilot-grant and training programs, and the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai, a transatlantic institute jointly established with the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam to develop data-driven and AI-enabled digital health tools using clinical and electronic health record data.

Rankings

The Mount Sinai Hospital, the teaching hospital of the school, was listed in the 2025-2026 edition of U.S. News & World Report Honor Roll, with multiple specialties ranked in the top 20 nationwide (cardiology #2, geriatrics #3, gastroenterology #5, cancer #6, urology #6, neurology & neurosurgery #11, orthopedics #14, obstetrics & gynecology #17, diabetes & endocrinology #19).

ISMMS was ranked 11th among medical schools in the U.S. receiving NIH grants in 2024, was awarded $489.8 million funding for their researchers.

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.

Controversy

In July of 2023, the New York County Supreme Court dismissed an April 2019, 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 denied the claims. More than 150 students at the Icahn School and more than 400 Icahn and Mount Sinai Health System faculty signed letters, addressed to the Board of Trustees, calling on the system to investigate these allegations.

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
Rivka Galchen, 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, cancer biologist and the Jane B. and Jack R. Aron Professor of Neoplastic Diseases and founding chair 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 former 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, former 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 one of the most widely used tools 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, noted for his role in establishing VATS lobectomy as a 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 the four major research awards from the world's leading cardiovascular organizations, and among the first to demonstrate that acute coronary events arise from small plaques.
Eric M. Genden, professor and chairman of the department of otolaryngology, who performed one of the first successful jaw and laryngotracheal transplants in New York State.
Isabelle M. Germano, professor of neurosurgery, neurology, and oncological sciences, and a 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.
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 at the 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 and the textbook Neurologic Emergencies.
René Kahn, neuropsychiatrist (schizophrenia, neuroimaging), Klingenstein Professor.
Amy Kelley, geriatrician and palliative care specialist, deputy director of the National Institute on Aging.
Annapoorna Kini, associate professor of cardiology and co-author of "Definitions of Acute Coronary Syndromes" in Hurst's The Heart.
Philip J. Landrigan, advocate of children's health and pioneer in the field of pediatric environmental 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 Treatment of Skin Disease.
I Michael Leitman, professor of surgery and dean for graduate medical education.
Ihor R. Lemischka, 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 among 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, 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 Cell, Developmental and Regenerative 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., and dean for medical education at Icahn School of Medicine.
Eric J. Nestler, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, as well as dean for academic and scientific affairs and director of the Friedman Brain Institute.
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 and the Horace W. Goldsmith Professor of Microbiology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Giulio Maria Pasinetti, Saunders Family Chair and Professor of Neurology, program director of the 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, cardiac surgeon noted for performing the 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, featured in television documentaries on PBS, BBC, CBC, SBS, NatGeo, Science Channel, Discovery, Channel 4 (UK) and others, 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, and Mystery of the Walking Whale.
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.
Ilya B. Tsyrlov, biochemist, molecular toxicologist, and virologist.
I. Michael Leitman, surgeon and dean for graduate medical education, professor in the Department of Medical Education and the Department of Surgery.
Samuel Waxman, Distinguished Service Professor of Oncological Science.
Denise Cai, associate professor, neuroscientist, co-developer of the UCLA miniscope, and co-director of the Computational and Systems Neuroscience Center.