Meet Wolfram Goessling, New Chair of the Yale Department of Internal Medicine

On Sept. 1, Wolfram Goessling, MD, PhD, assumed the role of chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at Yale School of Medicine (YSM), chief of internal medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital, and physician-in-chief for medicine across the Yale New Haven Health System. Since his first few days at Yale, Goessling has been meeting people and building connections, including at a YSM welcome reception in his honor, hosted by Dean Nancy J. Brown, MD.

“We all have different experiences, backgrounds, and interests,” Goessling says. “Making sure faculty, staff, and trainees can find a place in the department to be who they are and who they want to become is an important goal of mine.”

Before joining Yale, Goessling was chief of gastroenterology and the Jules L. Dienstag, MD, and Betty and Newell Hale Endowed Chair in Gastroenterology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He also served as the Robert H. Ebert Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the HMS director of the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

In a Q&A, Goessling discusses why he came to Yale, his pioneering research with zebrafish, and how he hopes to include faculty, staff, and trainees in developing a vision for the department.

I'm excited to be in a place that is an integral part of both the School of Medicine and the university. It's a community and an environment that I'm looking forward to being a part of. Beyond that, I was drawn by the people—faculty, staff, and trainees, including those who've made so many seminal contributions to modern medicine. And it’s fantastic to see how residents and fellows are shaping the future of medicine.

My first step is to learn what our faculty, staff, and trainees are excited about and where they get their motivation. I also want to learn about their concerns and where they feel the department and YSM can be more supportive, especially during these unprecedented times. From there, we can create a vision that makes us optimistic about the future. I've always felt that engaging with and including others in the process of vision-making leads to a better outcome than if I went through the steps alone.

I lead by example, meaning I don't expect of others what I wouldn't expect of myself. I also lead from behind, encouraging and supporting people and getting excited for and with them when they take steps, especially if those steps are unknown, risky, or scary. I’ve always gotten excited about the projects and successes of my faculty and trainees, and that will always continue.

In medicine, we need to be transparent, direct, and sometimes quick to make decisions for the benefit of our patients. What I learned as an intern has helped me as a leader. I say what I mean, and I mean what I say.

I'm also hands-on; I learn by doing. I believe that wisdom comes from our direct interactions. Much of what I do—and will do—is inspired and informed by my experiences caring for patients and teaching students and residents.

It's fascinating to study a living organism that changes before your eyes. The zebrafish, discovered in the Ganges River and its tributaries in India in the late 1800s, have made their way into the aquaria of pet lovers around the world. They are unique in that their eggs are externally fertilized, and we can watch the beginning of life from the one-cell stage. At 24 hours, zebrafish have a beating heart, at 36 hours a circulating blood system, and by 72 hours—three days of life—a functioning liver that does everything that our adult human liver does. It metabolizes food, regulates protein, fat, and glucose metabolism, detoxifies both the body's own products and toxins from the environment, and produces blood-clotting factors.

In my lab, we use a microscope and genetic tools to watch what happens in the liver if we change genes or expose the fish to chemicals, drugs, or toxins. We can model the impact of a high-fat diet, alcohol, Tylenol, and other liver toxins. In this way, we can model disease states and then, just like physicians do at the bedside, gain insight and understanding into what's going on.

I've played trumpet since the third grade. I met my wife in high school, playing in the same orchestra. When I came to the United States, she suggested I join an orchestra to make friends outside of medicine.

The Department of Internal Medicine at Yale School of Medicine is among the nation's premier departments, bringing together an elite cadre of clinicians, investigators, educators, and staff in one of the world's top medical schools. To learn more, visit Internal Medicine.