About Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Education

Albert Einstein College of Medicine offers one of the nation’s largest programs for medical education. During the 2023-2024 academic year, the College of Medicine is home to 737 M.D. students, 209 Ph.D. students, 124 students in the combined M.D.-Ph.D. program, and 239 postdoctoral research fellows at our Belfer Institute for Advanced Biomedical Studies. More than 10,000 Einstein alumni are among the nation’s foremost clinicians, biomedical scientists and medical educators.

When the medical school opened its doors in 1955, the New York Times was already noting that “the new medical school’s distinguished and talented faculty assured the institution of a place in the ranks of the great medical schools in the world.” This prophecy has been more than fulfilled in the ensuing years.

Among its pioneering educational initiatives, Einstein was one of the first major medical schools to integrate bedside experience with learning, bringing first-year students into contact with patients and linking classroom study to case experience. Einstein also led the way in developing bioethics as an accepted academic discipline in medical school curricula, was the first private medical school in New York City to establish an academic department of family medicine, and was the first to create a residency program in internal medicine with an emphasis on women’s health.

In addition to its M.D. program, the College of Medicine offers programs for earning a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences, a joint M.D.-Ph.D., an M.S. in clinical research, and in collaboration with Cardozo Law, an M.S. in bioethics.

Research

While education is at the heart of Einstein’s mission, it is biomedical research that drives the College of Medicine’s growth. Einstein has 2,000 full-time faculty members located on its Jack and Pearl Resnick campus, and at Montefiore and its other clinical affiliates.
Einstein’s relationship with Montefiore supports a longstanding focus on bench-to-bedside research, through which discoveries in Einstein’s laboratories lead to therapies and treatments for patients on an accelerated timetable.

Long a national leader in biomedical research support from the Federal government, Einstein receives $200 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health each year. This includes the funding for major research centers at Einstein in aging, intellectual development disorders, diabetes, cancer, clinical and translational research, liver disease and AIDS. Other areas of focus include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities.

Einstein also was the only New York City institution selected to participate in the Federal government’s landmark Women’s Health Initiative, and it is currently one of just four sites nationwide taking part in a large-scale study of the health status of the Hispanic/Latino community in the Bronx, supported by the NIH.