Message from the Director

Welcome to the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program! It is truly an exciting time to be pursuing a career in infectious diseases and we hope you join us. Our faculty are dedicated to training future infectious diseases physicians who can build a successful career in patient care, education, and research.

Strong Memorial Hospital (SMH), which is our main teaching hospital for the University of Rochester, is an 800-bed, Level 1 trauma center that serves the greater population of Western New York and the surrounding areas that includes Buffalo, Syracuse and the Southern Tier. In addition to being a Level 1 trauma center, SMH provides medical, surgical, burn trauma and neurosurgical intensive care units, the Wilmot Cancer Institute, which is the region’s only bone and marrow stem cell transplant program, and a solid organ transplant center which includes liver, pancreas, heart and kidney transplant programs. This vast array of medical and surgical services allows for our fellows to have maximal exposure to a wide variety of infectious disease processes in the immunocompetent and immunocompromised patient population all in a single institution.

The Department of Infectious Disease has a strong history in clinical research, especially in the research and development of vaccines. The Department is affiliated with NIH’s Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units (VTEU), the New York Influenza Center of Excellence (NYICE), the Respiratory Pathogens Research Center, and the Center for AIDS Research. The VTEU designs and conducts vaccine studies, which have previously included investigational vaccines to protect against seasonal pandemic and avian flu, pneumococcal disease, anthrax, herpes, malaria, human papilloma virus (HPV) and smallpox. Their current work is focused on understanding the epidemiology of COVID-19 and conducting clinical trials aimed at treatment and future vaccines.

Our outpatient clinic has a dedicated outpatient parenteral antibiotic therapy (OPAT) program, with a clinical pharmacist and nurse that allows for optimal utilization of antibiotic therapy. Our HIV clinic has dedicated faculty to provide mentorship and guidance, along with social work to provide assistance. In addition, our faculty run the Monroe County Sexual Health Clinic which provides a unique training environment as well as translational research opportunities.

Thank you for considering the University of Rochester’s Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program. We hope to see you soon!