YSM News and Recognition

Yale Fertility Center has been named to Newsweek's list of America's Best Fertility Clinics 2026. It is the sole fertility practice in Connecticut to earn a spot on the prestigious national ranking. The ranking is “a testament to our team's dedication to advancing scientific discovery, delivering clinical excellence, and fostering a culture of safety," says Emre Seli, MD, chief of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Yale School of Medicine and medical director of Yale Fertility Center.

The Yale School of Medicine Department of Surgery has launched the Health Career Collaborative–New Haven, a mentorship program connecting local high school students with surgeons and trainees to explore careers in medicine. Developed in partnership with New Haven Public Schools and supported by the American College of Surgeons’ H.O.P.E. initiative, the program combines hands-on learning with sustained mentorship. The goal is to expand pathways into health care and inspire the next generation of physicians.

Bubu Banini, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine (digestive diseases), and Wajahat Mehal, MD, DPhil, professor of medicine (digestive diseases), led the inaugural Connecticut Liver Health Day Educational Luncheon, part of a new statewide initiative to raise awareness and improve care for liver disease. The effort grew out of recommendations from the Connecticut State Working Group on MASH, which they co-chaired, to address the rising and often underdiagnosed burden of liver disease. Banini is also translational research director of the Metabolic Health and Weight Loss Program and vice chief for clinical research in digestive diseases. Mehal is director of the Yale Fatty Liver Disease Program and the Yale Metabolic Health and Weight Loss Program.

Sarah Householder, MD, hospital resident at Yale School of Medicine, has won a House Officer Research Award from the Society for Pediatric Research. The award is presented annually to recognize outstanding research conducted by house officers and to honor individuals who have made meaningful contributions to advancing children’s health. This award encourages early-career physicians to pursue careers in academic pediatrics. Recipients are selected based on the quality of work presented in abstracts submitted to the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting, where Householder and other award recipients will be honored.

Eleanor Reid, MD, PhD, assistant professor of emergency medicine, was selected as the 2026 recipient of the American Medical Women’s Association’s Esther Pohl Lovejoy Award for Improving International Health. The award recognizes a woman physician who has dedicated her life to promoting international relations through improvements in international health. Reid specializes in emergency medicine and global health, with specific focus on emergency medicine development and global palliative care. She is collaborating with international partners on projects at the intersection of palliative care and emergency medicine development in Ethiopia, Uganda, Puerto Rico, Peru, and Greece.

Lester Rodríguez Santos, a PhD candidate in the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, has received the Disciplinary Outreach Service Award from the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for his work founding and organizing the Neuroscience and Cognition Bootcamp, an initiative of the Wu Tsai Institute's Student, Postbac, and Postdoc Collective that offers three-day immersive and interactive training on modern neuroscience techniques to New Haven high school students. More than 40 students have participated in this program over the past two years.

Samir Zaidi, MD, PhD, was awarded an American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Trailblazer Cancer Research Grant during the opening ceremony of the AACR annual meeting. He was among nine early-stage investigators and six mid-career investigators who were awarded grants of $1 million each to support promising cancer research. Zaidi, who received the award for his project "Mechanisms of cellular plasticity in neuroendocrine prostate cancer initiation," is an assistant professor of medicine (medical oncology) as well as a member of the Center for Molecular and Cellular Oncology at Yale Cancer Center.

Three Yale researchers were honored at the 2026 Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS) meeting, one of the most prestigious gatherings in clinical and translational science. Lucila Ohno-Machado, MD, PhD (left), Waldemar von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics and Data Science and deputy dean for biomedical informatics, received the ACTS Edward H. Ahrens, Jr. Distinguished Investigator Award, one of the organization's most prestigious honors, celebrating exceptional and sustained contributions to the field of clinical and translational science. Karen Wang, MD, MHS (center), assistant professor of internal medicine (general medicine) and assistant professor of biostatistics (health informatics), won the ACTS Publication Award for her paper in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science identifying incarceration status in the electronic health record using large language models in emergency department settings. Kathleen Fitzpatrick Rosenbaum, PhD, RN, postdoctoral fellow at Yale School of Nursing, received the Outstanding Trainee Award. Her research uses an interdisciplinary approach that combines nursing, health economics, and health equity.