Location: Medical Education Building Auditorium
Date: Mar 11, 2026 - Mar 11, 2026
Start Time: 4:00 pm
End Time: 5:00 pm
Richard (Rick) Lifton, MD, PhD
Richard (Rick) Lifton, MD, PhD, has pioneered the use of genetics and genomics to understand fundamental mechanisms underlying human diseases, including cardiovascular disease, neoplasia, kidney disease, and osteoporosis. He is especially known for research on hypertension and salt intake, work which has informed public health efforts and therapeutic strategies used worldwide.
Dr. Lifton received his B.A. in biological sciences from Dartmouth College, followed by an M.D. and Ph.D. in biochemistry from Stanford University. He completed his medical residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital prior to establishing his research laboratory at Yale University. Dr. Lifton was appointed as chair of Yale’s Department of Genetics in 1998 and was the executive director of the Yale Center for Genome Analysis, which he founded in 2009. In May 2016, Dr. Lifton was named the 11th President of Rockefeller University.
Dr. Lifton is a 2014 Breakthrough Prize winner, a 2008 recipient of the Wiley Prize for Biomedical Sciences, and has received the highest scientific honors of the American Heart Association, the American and International Societies of Nephrology, the American and International Societies of Hypertension, and the Endocrine Society. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine and served as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator from 1994 until assuming the Rockefeller presidency. He was the co-chair of the planning committee for President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative in 2015.
Refreshments to follow the lecture: Medical Education Building, first floor lobby.