August 4, 2022
Dear Members of the Department of Medicine Community,
I am delighted to announce that Dr. Sahar Ahmad, Associate Professor of Medicine (with tenure) and Interim Chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, has been appointed Chief of the division, effectively immediately.
Well-known to all of us for her dedication to education and scholarship, Dr. Ahmad has also proven herself to be an astute clinician with a hardworking ethic. In addition to serving as Interim Chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine since the beginning of this year, she is Director of the Medical Intensive Care Unit, appointed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2020, Program Director of the Critical Care Medicine Fellowship, Director of Ultrasound & Critical Care Education at RSOM, and previously Associate Program Director of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship. As MICU director, Dr. Ahmad successfully rolled out night-time in-person attending coverage of the unit in early 2021, which significantly improved the care of patient in that unit.
As interim chief, she initiated a new program in her division that is dedicated to an Internal Medicine-Critical Care Medicine (IM-CCM) specialty, which is expected to further enhance patient safety and experience. As an educator, Dr. Ahmad single-handedly started a highly successful program using bedside ultrasound as a point-of-care tool for the training of medical students, residents, fellows, and attending physicians. Finally, and despite the challenging clinical environment in the last two years, Dr. Ahmad has maintained a stellar record in scholarship, having authored or co-authored almost 20 peer-reviewed articles, including several clinical studies on hospitalized patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Dr. Ahmad received her M.D. degree from Weill Medical College of Cornell University. She performed her residency training in Internal Medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and then fellowship training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center, where she was also Chief Fellow. She joined the Pulmonary division at Stony Brook in 2013, and has received numerous recognitions and awards for teaching, highlighted by her induction as a faculty member into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society and her receiving the 2017 Aesculapius Award for Excellence in Medical Education in the Renaissance School of Medicine. Dr. Ahmad has definitively proven herself as a “triple-threat” academic physician and is imminently qualified for the position herein.
I am thrilled to have Dr. Ahmad as the newest division chief in our department and please do join me in giving Sahar a warm welcome, and wish her continuing success in her newest appointment.
Sincerely,
Vincent W. Yang, MD, PhD, FACP, AGAF, FAAAS
SUNY Distinguished Professor
Simons Chair of Medicine
Professor of Medicine, Biomedical Informatics, and Physiology & Biophysics
Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University
