School Notes: School of Medicine
September/October 2024

Gift establishes program in dementia

Yale School of Medicine has received a gift from the Carol and Gene Ludwig Family Foundation (LFF) to establish the Carol and Gene Ludwig Program for the Study of Neuroimmune Interactions in Dementia. Established in 2002, the LFF makes charitable investments in support of medical research, education, and community engagement. Gene Ludwig is an alumnus of Yale Law School’s Class of 1973.

In addition to advancing innovative research, the program will help facilitate the sharing of ideas, data, and knowledge to drive biomedical progress, therapeutics, and cures focused on combating Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Importantly, the program also includes the funding of an assistant professor position, named as a Ludwig Scholar, with expertise on neurodegenerative disease and neuroinflammation.

The Ludwig Program will be led by codirectors Stephen Strittmatter, Vincent Coates Professor of Neurology and chair and professor of neuroscience, and Lauren Sansing, professor of neurology and of immunobiology, and vice chair in the Department of Neurology for academic and faculty affairs.

Biomedical informatics and data science becomes full department

Last spring, the Yale Corporation approved the transition of the Section of Biomedical Informatics & Data Science (BIDS) at Yale School of Medicine (YSM) into a full department.

An early leader in biomedical informatics, YSM holds one of the three longest-standing National Institutes of Health (NIH)–supported training programs in this field. In 2022, Lucila Ohno-Machado, an internationally renowned expert in privacy-enhancing technologies and a National Academy of Medicine member, joined YSM to lead the freestanding BIDS section, coalescing the community and strengthening the infrastructure related to this research, and to serve as deputy dean for biomedical informatics. She is chair of the new department.

BIDS faculty members have received external awards for leadership and membership from the NIH and professional societies and served on numerous national committees, advisory boards, and university committees. Attaining department status will enable BIDS to increase its national profile and position YSM to lead in medicine-related AI.