Sharon K. Inouye MD, MPH

Dr. Sharon K. Inouye is the Director of the Aging Brain Center at the Institute for Aging Research, Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston, Massachusetts. She holds the Milton and Shirley F. Levy Family Chair and is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center). Her research focuses on delirium and functional decline in hospitalized older patients, resulting in more than 200 peer-reviewed original articles to date. Currently, she is the overall principal investigator of the Successful Aging after Elective Surgery (SAGES) study, an $11 million Program Project on delirium funded by the National Institute on Aging, as well as 5 other active research projects. The purpose of the SAGES study is to examine the interface of delirium and dementia, whether delirium alters the course of dementia, and whether delirium leads to longstanding cognitive impairment and pathologic changes in the brain. Dr. Inouye is committed to improving health and quality of life for older persons and their families.

She was previously awarded the American Geriatrics Society Outstanding Scientific Achievement for Clinical Investigation Award (1998), the Donaghue Investigator Award (1998-2003), a Midcareer Award from the National Institute on Aging (1999-2005), election to the American Society of Clinical Investigation (2002), the Ewald W. Busse Research Award in Biomedical Sciences (Gerontological Society of America, 2003), the UCLA David H. Solomon Award (2005), the 2005 Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award (Arnold P. Gold Foundation), election to the Yale Society of Distinguished Teachers (2005), election to the Association of American Physicians (AAP) (2007), the Pinnacle Award from the Boston Chamber of Commerce, the 2010 Edward Henderson Award for the American Geriatrics Society, and the 2013 Clifford A. Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award from Harvard Medical School. Her work has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1991.

Dr. Inouye was previously at Yale University School of Medicine from 1985 to 2005, where she was a tenured professor of medicine, director of the Yale Mentored Clinical Research Scholars Program (K12), co-director of the Yale Program on Aging and Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center, director of the Yale Mentorship Program in Patient-Oriented Research on Aging, and director of Patient-Oriented Research for the Yale Investigative Medicine Program (K30).