Center for Clinical and Translational Science

Emma Guttman-Yassky, MD, PhD, a world-renowned expert in the molecular and cellular pathomechanisms of inflammatory skin diseases, has been named Chair of the Kimberly and Eric J. Waldman Department of Dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Mount Sinai Health System.

Dr. Guttman-Yassky is the first woman to serve as Chair of a Department of Dermatology in New York City. She is currently the Sol and Clara Kest Professor of Dermatology, Vice Chair of Research, Director of the Center for Excellence in Eczema, and Director of the Laboratory of Inflammatory Skin Diseases at Mount Sinai. She will retain her Center and Laboratory roles after her new appointment.

Board certified in dermatology in the United States and Israel, Dr. Guttman-Yassky earned her medical degree from the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, and her PhD from Bar-Ilan University Ramat-Gan, both in Israel. She joined Dr. James Krueger’s Laboratory of Investigative Dermatology at Rockefeller after completing a dermatology residency at the Rambam Medical Center/Technion Institute in Haifa. During her Clinical Scholar training she studied psoriasis and atopic dermatitis. After graduating, she performed a second dermatology residency at Weill-Cornell Medicine in New York. She then joined the Icahn School of Medicine faculty in 2011 upon completion of her training.

 

“I am both excited and humbled by the opportunity to serve as System Chair for the Department of Dermatology at Mount Sinai,” said Dr. Guttman-Yassky. “ Dr. Guttman-Yassky one of the leading experts in inflammatory skin diseases and authored more than 275 articles. Her research on atopic dermatitis/eczema has contributed to many of the recently developed treatments for this disease. She has also shown that AD is a complex disease with distinct phenotypes based on ethnicity, age, and other factors, with important therapeutic implications. She has recently also extended her research interest to alopecia areata in which her findings have also been translated to novel therapeutic targets. She is now testing (both clinically and mechanistically) multiple targeted-therapeutics for atopic dermatitis and other inflammatory skin diseases.

In her new role as Chair, Dr. Guttman-Yassky will continue her inflammatory disease research program focusing on eczema/atopic dermatitis (AD), which has also recently expanded to other inflammatory skin diseases, including alopecia areata, scarring alopecia, keloids, and ichthyosis. She has developed comprehensive molecular maps of AD, defining skin differentiation and immune circuits characterizing this disease. Using a translational bench-to-bedside-and-back approach, Dr. Guttman-Yassky seeks discoveries that will lead to novel immune pathway-specific drugs that can be tested in patients with inflammatory skin diseases.

Dr. Guttman-Yassky is co-founder and current President of the International Eczema Council, which has grown to more than 100 world leaders in eczema. She has received many national and international awards, most recently the prestigious research achievement award of the American Skin Association and she is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation.