The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS or Mount Sinai), formerly the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is a private medical school in New York City, New York, United States. It is the sole academic partner of the Mount Sinai Health System, which operates seven hospital campuses in the New York metropolitan area, including The Mount Sinai Hospital and the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. Eric J. Nestler is the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the school, and Brendan Carr is president and chief executive officer of the health system.
The school was proposed in 1958, chartered in 1963, and opened in 1968. It was renamed the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2012 following a $200 million gift from businessman and philanthropist Carl Icahn.
Academic programs include MD, PhD, MD–PhD, and master's degrees. The campus is on Manhattan's Upper East Side, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, from East 98th to East 102nd streets.
History
As Mount Sinai School of Medicine The first official proposal to establish a medical school at Mount Sinai was made to the hospital's trustees in January 1958. The proposed institution combined a medical school supported by a teaching hospital with graduate programs in the biological and physical sciences and education in allied health fields.
This philosophy was defined by Hans Popper, Horace Hodes, Alexander Gutman, Paul Klemperer, George Baehr, Gustave L. Levy, and Alfred Stern, among others. Milton Steinbach was the school's first president.
Classes at Mount Sinai School of Medicine began in 1968 under an affiliation with the City University of New York, which granted the school's degrees.
The school expanded its programs and established new academic departments in subsequent decades. These included the Edith J. Baerwald Professorship of Community Medicine and Social Work in 1969; a Department of Neoplastic Diseases in 1973, described by the American Association for Cancer Research as the first of its kind at an American medical school; and the first academic department of geriatrics in the United States in 1982.
In the 1990s, the school expanded several research and outreach programs. Its Department of Emergency Medicine became operational in 1994. In 1998, it established the Center for Multicultural and Community Affairs to increase the representation of groups underrepresented in medicine and to support communities served by the school and hospital. With support from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Department of Preventive Medicine established the Center for Children's Health and the Environment in 1999 to examine links between childhood illness and exposure to toxic pollutants.
Mount Sinai's degrees were granted by CUNY before 1999, when the school changed its university affiliation to New York University. The change followed the 1998 merger of the Mount Sinai and NYU medical centers into the Mount Sinai–NYU Medical Center and Health System. The institutions began dissolving their partnership in 2003.
In 2007, Mount Sinai Medical Center's boards of trustees approved termination of the academic affiliation, which formally ended in 2008. In 2010, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education accredited Mount Sinai as an independent degree-granting institution.
As Icahn School of Medicine On November 14, 2012, the school announced that it would be renamed the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai following a $200 million gift from Carl Icahn.
Academics
The school offers MD and graduate programs through its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Doctoral offerings include PhD programs in biomedical sciences, neuroscience, clinical research, and health sciences engineering, as well as a NIH-funded MD–PhD program. Master's programs include biomedical science, public health, clinical research, and health administration.
Admissions Applicants to the MD program must hold a bachelor's degree and complete required coursework in biology, chemistry, physics, and related subjects. Applicants through the regular admissions route also submit MCAT scores. The school's FlexMed early-assurance program allows college sophomores from any major to apply without completing the traditional premedical science requirements or taking the MCAT.
Campus The 18-story Icahn Medical Institute provides approximately 350,000 square feet of laboratory, treatment, and education space. The campus is on Manhattan's Upper East Side, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, from East 98th to East 102nd streets.
Partnerships and affiliations In 2017, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Mount Sinai opened a fetal medicine program in New York and affiliated the Mount Sinai Children's Heart Center with CHOP's Cardiac Center. Mount Sinai also partnered with National Jewish Health to establish the Mount Sinai–National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute.
Research collaborations In 2025, the Icahn School of Medicine, ARC Innovation at Israel's Sheba Medical Center, and NVIDIA announced a three-year collaboration to develop large language models for genomic research. The project combines genomic datasets and clinical expertise from Mount Sinai and Sheba with NVIDIA's computing infrastructure and software to study relationships among genetic variation, disease risk, and treatment response.
Also in 2025, the research organization BD² awarded a Mount Sinai team led by neuroscientist Ignacio Saez up to $4.5 million over three years to record brain activity and study changes in neural-network dynamics associated with shifts in bipolar mood states.
In 2025, the National Institutes of Health awarded the Albert Einstein College of Medicine a five-year, $10.8 million grant to expand the Einstein–Mount Sinai Diabetes Research Center into the New York Regional Diabetes Research Center, co-led by Einstein, the Icahn School of Medicine, and Weill Cornell Medicine. The expanded center includes more than 140 scientists and clinicians studying diabetes and related metabolic diseases.
COVID-19 response The first confirmed case of COVID-19 in New York City was diagnosed by Mount Sinai emergency physician Angela Chen. During the initial New York City surge in March 2020, Mount Sinai faculty, residents, and fellows treated patients at Elmhurst Hospital Center, a major training site for the school.
Rankings The Mount Sinai Hospital, a teaching hospital of the school, was named to the 2025–26 U.S. News & World Report Honor Roll. Nine specialties were ranked among the top 20 nationally: cardiology and heart surgery (2), geriatrics (3), gastroenterology and gastrointestinal surgery (5), cancer (6), urology (6), neurology and neurosurgery (11), orthopedics (14), obstetrics and gynecology (tied at 17), and diabetes and endocrinology (19).
In fiscal year 2025, the school received $501.7 million in NIH funding and ranked 11th among U.S. medical schools by total NIH awards.
Publications The Annals of Global Health was founded at Mount Sinai in 1934 as the Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine. Levy Library Press publishes the Journal of Scientific Innovation in Medicine and The Practical Implementation of Nursing Science.
Controversy In April 2019, eight current and former employees of the school's Arnhold Institute for Global Health filed a federal lawsuit alleging sex, race, and age discrimination, a hostile work environment, retaliation, breaches of research ethics, and other misconduct. Mount Sinai denied the allegations. In April 2022, a federal court dismissed all claims brought by four of the plaintiffs while allowing some claims by other plaintiffs to continue. Four plaintiffs later brought state and city claims; the New York County Supreme Court dismissed several of those claims in July 2023, and the Appellate Division unanimously affirmed the dismissal of the appealed state and city human-rights claims in May 2024, however some of the claims of two plaintiffs were allowed and the case remains active. More than 150 medical students and over 400 employees and alum of the Icahn School of Medicine and the Mount Sinai Health System signed a letter asking Mount Sinai's trustees to investigate the allegations. The case catalyzed New York City legislation creating a Gender Equity Advisory Board for New York City’s hospitals.Gender Racial Equity Advisory Board Report, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, December 11, 2025
Notable people
Alumni Jacob M. Appel, novelist and short story author who earned an MPH from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Balamurali Ambati, who graduated from Mount Sinai in 1995 at age 17 and was recognized as the world's youngest physician. Jeffrey Scott Flier, former dean of Harvard Medical School. Scott L. Friedman, class of 1979, liver researcher and former president of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. Rivka Galchen, author who earned her MD from Mount Sinai. Stuart Gitlow, Mount Sinai graduate and former president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Jeffrey P. Koplan, Mount Sinai graduate and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Herminia Palacio, former Deputy Mayor of New York City under Bill de Blasio and former president and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute. Charles Schleien, pediatrician and medical researcher. Benjamin (Benji) Ungar, 2006 NCAA men's épée champion and a graduate of the Icahn School of Medicine.
Faculty and former faculty As of the 2025–26 academic year, 27 faculty members had been elected to the National Academy of Medicine or the National Academy of Sciences. Robert Neil Butler, physician, gerontologist, psychiatrist, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, first director of the National Institute on Aging, and founding chair of Mount Sinai's Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development. Arnold Martin Katz, cardiologist, author of Physiology of the Heart, and the first Philip J. and Harriet L. Goodhart Professor of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Stuart A. Aaronson, cancer biologist and the Jane B. and Jack R. Aron Professor of Neoplastic Diseases and founding chair of Oncological Sciences. Judith Aberg, infectious-disease researcher whose work has focused on HIV-related comorbidities, vaccine responses, and chronic inflammation. David H. Adams, co-creator of the Carpentier-McCarthy-Adams IMR ETlogix Ring and the Carpentier-Edwards Physio II degenerative annuloplasty ring. Joshua B. Bederson, neurosurgeon specializing in cerebrovascular and skull-base surgery. Solomon Berson, physician and scientist whose work with Rosalyn Yalow contributed to major advances in clinical biochemistry. Deepak L. Bhatt, interventional cardiologist and clinical researcher in cardiovascular prevention, intervention, and heart failure. Michael J. Bronson, orthopaedic surgeon and developer of the Vision Total Hip System. Michael L. Brodman, obstetrician-gynecologist specializing in female pelvic medicine and urogynecology. Steven J. Burakoff, cancer specialist, author of both Therapeutic Immunology (2001) and Graft-Vs.-Host Disease: Immunology, Pathophysiology, and Treatment (1990), and former director of Mount Sinai Hospital's Cancer Institute. Alain F. Carpentier, cardiac surgeon known for developing techniques used in modern mitral valve repair. Thomas C. Chalmers, known for his role in the development of the randomized controlled trial and meta-analysis in medical research. Dennis S. Charney, biological psychiatrist and former dean of the school whose research has focused on the neurobiology and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders. Kenneth L. Davis, psychiatrist and co-developer of the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale. Charles DeLisi, former professor and chair of biomathematical sciences and professor of molecular biology who launched the Human Genome Project. Burton Drayer, president of Mount Sinai Hospital (2003–2008) and president of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).