New York Medical College (NYMC) appoints its very own Neil W. Schluger, M.D., Barbara and William Rosenthal Chair of the Department of Medicine and professor of medicine, as the dean of the School of Medicine (SOM). The search comes to an end as the faculty/student search committee spent eight months interviewing prospective candidates from across the country to succeed Jerry L. Nadler, M.D., who stepped down as dean in January 2023 following the death of his beloved wife and supporter of the SOM, Mary Latona Nadler. Dr. Schluger assumes his new duties on August 15. Recently recognized by Crain’s New York Business as a 2023 Notable Health Care Leader for his exceptional work and dedication to health care, Dr. Schluger is an international renowned pulmonologist. His leadership on the NYMC campus and at Westchester Medical Center, as the director of medicine, began in 2020. He distinguished himself as a clinician, researcher and educator, leading a department of more than 425 faculty members and teaching more than 800 medical students and residents. In 2021, he took on the additional role of associate dean for clinical and translational research for the SOM. Dr. Schluger’s influence expands well beyond the U.S., as he is a founder of the East Africa Training Initiative (EATI) in Pulmonary Medicine. The two-year fellowship training program in pulmonary and critical care medicine, which marked its tenth anniversary in 2023, is the first training program of its kind in Ethiopia and the broader East African region. Before the launch of EATI, Ethiopia had only one pulmonologist for its 110 million people. Thus far, the initiative graduated 18 specialists, including two pediatric pulmonologists and two physicians from Rwanda and Tanzania, who have assumed leadership roles at hospitals across East Africa. He has been a principal investigator in the Tuberculosis Trials Consortium, an international collaboration sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 25 years and was the chair of the consortium from 2000-2016. Dr. Schluger has been an author or editor of several editions of the Tobacco Atlas, the definitive work describing the extent and consequences of the global epidemic of tobacco use, published by Vital Strategies and the American Cancer Society. Dr. Schluger also serves as a member of the board of trustees at Vital Strategies, a global not-for-profit organization devoted to public health issues.