Barbara L. Hempstead MD, PhD

As Dean of Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Barbara is an educator dedicated to creating an environment to foster the next generation of healthcare leaders, ensuring that doctoral, medical, and master’s students receive the finest education to prepare them to succeed in a rapidly evolving scientific environment.

For more than 30 years as a neuroscientist and hematologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, she has conducted research, treated patients, and trained students. Holding a variety of institutional roles, including as the O. Wayne Isom Professor of Medicine and a professor of neuroscience in the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute, co-chief of the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology, and associate dean for faculty development, she has mentored and sponsored students and faculty.

In her most recent role as senior associate dean of medical education, she directed and implemented the institution’s innovative medical curriculum, now in its fifth year, which integrates the scientific basis of disease with early exposure to clinical care and a formal curriculum on professionalism, and provides a dedicated six-month research block to complete the Areas of Concentration capstone program.