Curriculum

Our required two-year training program is designed to offer the fellow comprehensive clinical training experiences and flexible research opportunities.

The first year of fellowship training is a clinical year divided into 13 four-week blocks. During this year the fellows spends the majority of time on clinical consultation services, including General ID-HIV, Transplant ID (including Solid Organ Transplant and Bone Marrow Transplant/Oncology Service) and Inpatient HIV Service.

  • Three blocks on the Mount Sinai General ID-HIV consultation service
  • Three blocks on the Elmhurst ID consultation service
  • Four blocks on the Mount Sinai Transplant ID consultation service
  • Two blocks on the Mount Sinai Inpatient HIV medicine service
  • One block of Clinical Microbiology Laboratory training

The second year of fellowship is primarily a research year. Fellows interested in additional training in transplant infectious diseases have the option to complete our new Transplant Infectious Disease (TID) Track during their second year. The curriculum for this track is described separately below.

  • One block on the Mount Sinai Inpatient HIV medicine service
  • One block of Clinical Rotations (Clinical Rotations include: General ID-HIV service, Outpatient ID Clinic at Elmhurst, STI/PrEP/PEP Clinic at Elmhurst)
  • Eleven blocks of Research

Each fellow has a weekly continuity clinic at either Mount Sinai or Elmhurst Hospital for the entirety of the two-year fellowship. Fellows learn infection prevention/hospital epidemiology and antimicrobial stewardship throughout their fellowship and will also rotate for a total of four weeks with our Antimicrobial Stewardship Program and Infection Prevention/Hospital Epidemiology teams. All fellows will be given guidance and opportunity to pursue scholarly projects during their training. During their first year of fellowship, fellows are assigned a faculty advisor to help with career development and to discuss the fellow’s clinical and research interests. Fellows will also attend quarterly research meetings as a part of their core lecture series; these meetings have been designed to help first year fellows identify an area of interest, formulate a research question, and develop a study design and to allow second year fellows to present their research and receive feedback.

Potential areas for scholarly activity for fellows at Mount Sinai include but are not limited to:

  • Antimicrobial stewardship and antibiotic resistance
  • Clinical and translational research including behavioral, epidemiology, genomics and interventional trials
  • HIV laboratory research including pathogenesis, therapeutics and vaccine development
  • Host pathogen interactions
  • Infection control & prevention and hospital epidemiology
  • Molecular diagnostics and epidemiology
  • Transplant infectious disease
  • Virology including coronavirus (SARS CoV2), CMV, flaviviruses, influenza, hepatitis

Fellows will also gain experience in quality improvement projects during their fellowship and will be able to pursue activities in medical education with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, both in the classroom and in the clinical settings. Fellows have the option of a third year of fellowship which would be fully dedicated to research if this is in line with their career path.

Fellows have the option of a third year of fellowship which would be fully dedicated to research if this is in line with their career path.

The Transplant Infectious Diseases (TID) track is a training path available to second- year Mount Sinai Hospital ID fellows who are interested in a career in transplant infectious diseases. The TID track is an opportunity for focused clinical and research experience with the immunosuppressed host and has the following components.The Transplant Infectious Disease (TID) Track is an optional training path for fellows interested in a career in transplant infectious diseases.

Clinical component

Inpatient Fellows on the TID track will spend a minimum of two 4-week blocks on Solid Organ Transplant ID and two 4-week blocks on BMT/Oncology ID consult services during their second year of fellowship training. The track fellows function as the senior fellow when on the inpatient service and in addition to seeing patients, have the opportunity to participate in teaching for the junior MSH and visiting fellows.

Ambulatory: The TID track fellows see outpatients at the Recanti-Miller transplant institute, Cardiology VAD clinic, the General ID/Transplant ID clinic, and at the Mount Sinai Respiratory Institute. The track fellows will attend one half-day session per week in transplant clinics except when they are on an inpatient consult service.

Research component: The TID track fellow will be required to participate in scholarly projects related to transplant infectious diseases under guidance of a dedicated mentor from among the transplant ID faculty. The fellows are expected to present their scholarly work at the end of their second-year of fellowship, to submit an abstract to a relevant national or international meeting and prepare a manuscript for publication in a peer-reviewed medical journal. Track fellows are also required to participate in transplant focused educational activities including the weekly case discussion meeting and monthly TID academic hour. Track fellows also have the opportunity to attend the American Society of Transplant (AST) Fellows Symposium held annually.

Supervision: This track has been developed by Dr. Sarah Taimur, Director of the Transplant ID Fellowship Track, and Dr. Meenakshi Rana, Director of Transplant ID. Fellows on this track mentored by Dr. Taimur and Dr. Rana and will be directly supervised by our Transplant ID faculty when on the TID services. Call schedule: Fellows selected for the TID track will not be required to do any additional weekday or weekend call aside from the call days assigned to them as part of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Infectious Disease Fellowship.

Learn more

Take a look at our training schedule.

There are a number of formal conferences and didactic sessions throughout the two-year fellowship.

Fellows Case Conference
Tuesdays, 5pm
This is an integrated conference during which our adult and pediatric infectious disease fellows throughout the Mount Sinai Health System present interesting cases from the consult services, the HIV service, or ambulatory settings. The case presentations are complemented by a review of the relevant medical literature. Our monthly divisional Quality Improvement (QI) conference is incorporated into the weekly case conference schedule.

Scholarly Half Day
Thursday, 2 - 4pm
Thursday afternoons are protected from clinical activities and features a formal lecture series taught by Mount Sinai faculty that covers core topics in Infectious Diseases that spans the two-year fellowship. There is also a longitudinal ambulatory HIV curriculum that covers the principles of and evidence behind HIV infection, antiretroviral therapy, infectious and medical complications of HIV infection and treatment, and co-morbidities seen in HIV infected individuals. Second year fellows lead HIV didactic sessions with supervision by the Program Director and Associate Program Director. Research meetings and a Wellness curriculum are also components of the scholarly half-day.

Microbiology Plate Rounds
Wednesdays, 9am
Fellows attend weekly rounds where they review the microbiology and pathology specimens of clinical cases. These sessions are supervised and taught by Drs. Melissa Gitman, Michael Nowak and Alberto Paniz-mondolfi.

Divisional Grand Rounds
Wednesdays, 12pm
This is a weekly conference for the Division of Infectious Disease and Global Health & Emerging Pathogens Institute (GHEPI). A variety of topics including basic and clinical research as well as clinical updates are presented by expert speakers from Mount Sinai and other institutions.

Journal Club
Wednesdays, 5pm
Journal club is an integrated conference with all the infectious disease fellows in the Mount Sinai Health System. This journal club is supervised by the Program Directors at each of the campuses and appropriate faculty based on the topic of the articles. Both recent and “landmark” articles will be reviewed and key concepts in the critical review of the literature will be taught.

Immunocompromised Lecture Series
Fridays, 8am
This lecture series occurs approximately once monthly and focuses on topics relevant to the immunocompromised host including invasive fungal infections, donor-derived infections, post-hematopoietic stem cell transplant pulmonary syndromes, CMV, amongst others.

The traditional two-year program is designed to offer the fellow comprehensive clinical training experiences and flexible research opportunities. Within the two-year experience, the fellow will spend:

  • Three months on the Mount Sinai General ID-HIV consultation service
  • Three months on the Elmhurst ID consultation service
  • Four months on the Mount Sinai Transplant ID consultation service, divided into two months on Solid Organ Transplant ID consultation and two months on BMT/Oncology ID consultation

Fellows who choose to do the Transplant Infectious Disease Track will do an additional two 4-week blocks on Solid Organ Transplant ID and two 4-week blocks on BMT/Oncology ID consults during their second year of fellowship (total of 4 months on Solid Organ Transplant ID and 4 months on BMT/Oncology ID consults during their two year fellowship).

  • Two months on the Mount Sinai Inpatient HIV service.
  • One month of Microbiology
  • One month of Antimicrobial Stewardship/Infection Prevention

During the second year of fellowship, fellows will have the option to choose between an additional month on the Mount Sinai Inpatient HIV service or pursuing the Transplant ID track depending on their career interests.

Each fellow has a weekly continuity clinic at either Mount Sinai or Elmhurst Hospital for the entirety of the two-year fellowship. As noted above, each fellow will receive four weeks of formal microbiology training during their first year as well as participate in a weekly microbiology “plate rounds”. Fellows learn infection prevention and antimicrobial stewardship throughout their fellowship but will work directly with our Antimicrobial Stewardship Program (ASP) and Infection Prevention (IP)/Hospital Epidemiology teams during a 4 week ASP/IP rotation in their second years. Fellows interested in further training in transplant infectious diseases can decide in the second half of their first year to pursue the Transplant ID (TID) track during their second year. The remainder of the fellowship is dedicated to research. Fellows can also elect to spend two to four weeks on the Pediatric Infectious Diseases during their second year.

The General ID-HIV Consultation Service provides the fellow with extensive experience in the diagnosis and management of infections in patients on a variety of services including internal medicine, neurology, surgery, and obstetrics and gynecology. In addition, there is extensive exposure to the management of infections in critically ill patients (MICU, CCU, SICU, and NSICU). Fellows also consult on the people with HIV who are not admitted to the inpatient HIV medicine (Silver Medicine) service.

Transplant ID Consultation Services

  • The Solid Organ Transplant (SOT) ID services consults on patients after liver, kidney, heart and small bowel transplant in addition to helping manage infectious complications in these patients before transplant, including infections in patients with ventricular assist devices and total artificial hearts. With our growing transplant services, the SOT ID consult service has been expanded into SOT A for liver, kidney and intestinal transplant and SOT B for heart transplant and cardiac devices, and lung transplant. Fellows will spend half of their SOT ID rotations (2 weeks) on SOT A and half on SOT B.
  • The BMT/Oncology ID service sees patients with malignancies including hematologic malignancies (such as leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, myelodysplastic syndrome), patients undergoing autologous and allogenic stem cell transplants, and solid oncology patients.

The Elmhurst ID Consultation Service at the Elmhurst Hospital Center, a city hospital located in Elmhurst, Queens that provides care to the nation's most internationally diverse community, is a truly unique experience. Patients served by this hospital are predominantly immigrants from all over the world including Central and South America, the Mediterranean basin, Asia, and Africa. As a result, fellows gain extensive experience in a broad range of international and tropical infections such as tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid fever, and other parasitic diseases. The Elmhurst teaching faculty are highly regarded, and the experience is highly valued by our fellows.

The Inpatient HIV Medicine (Silver Medicine) Rotation provides the fellow with direct experience in the management of hospitalized patients with HIV. This service is a general medicine service managed by the HIV hospitalist with internal medicine house staff teams. It is expected that the fellow will gain expertise in the management of routine and opportunistic infections as well as complications of antiretroviral therapy or related comorbid conditions. This rotation also allows fellows to develop their educational skills as they help teach and supervise internal medicine residents and medical students.

Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) Training: Fellows will learn screening, diagnosis and management of STIs in their continuity clinics and on the consult services. Additionally, second year fellows rotate through the Elmhurst outpatient ID clinics for one week to gain further experience in STI screening/management and HIV prevention (PrEP and PEP). Fellows will also complete the online STI course by the University of Washington during their second year.

Training in Microbiology: Fellows will participate in a formal four-week microbiology rotation under the supervision of the Medical Director of Clinical Microbiology, Melissa Gitman, MD, during their first year of fellowship. In addition, weekly microbiology rounds are held at both Mount Sinai and Elmhurst to review the relevant microbiology of the cases currently being managed by the fellows on the consult services.

Training in Infection Prevention/Hospital Epidemiology and Antimicrobial Stewardship: Although infection prevention/hospital epidemiology and antimicrobial stewardship are taught at both sites throughout all clinical rotations, fellows will undergo formal training with a total of a four week rotation during their second year. This rotation will be supervised by Gopi Patel, MD, MS, the Mount Sinai Health System's Director of Antimicrobial Stewardship Program and Director of Infection Prevention at Mount Sinai Hospital, and Rachal Chasan, MD, MPH, Director of Antimicrobial Stewardship at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Continuity Clinic: Each fellow is assigned a weekly continuity of care clinic at either the Mount Sinai-Harlem Health Center or Elmhurst. The fellow will be responsible for attending this clinic throughout the two years. The clinic population at each site varies somewhat, with primary emphasis on the outpatient management of HIV and other chronic infections in addition to follow up care from all the ID and HIV inpatient services. Fellows are precepted at Mount Sinai by Dr. Judith Aberg, Dr. Richard Silvera, and Dr. Peter Liu, and at Elmhurst Hospital by Dr. Neha Alang, Dr. Sushrita Neogi, and Dr. Carlos Salama. Preceptors at both sites are dedicated to fellow teaching and supervision of the clinical care provided by the fellows.

International Health: Fellows interested in international health can explore opportunities available through The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The Division of Infectious Diseases has established close collaborations with Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute (GHEPI). Furthermore, select investigators in the ID Division have established international research collaborations in focused areas. We encourage applicants interested in international health to contact us for further information.

Each fellow has a weekly continuity clinic at either Mount Sinai or Elmhurst Hospital for the entirety of the two-year fellowship. Fellows learn infection prevention/hospital epidemiology and antimicrobial stewardship throughout their fellowship and will also rotate for a total of four weeks with our Antimicrobial Stewardship Program and Infection Prevention/Hospital Epidemiology teams. All fellows will be given guidance and opportunity to pursue scholarly projects during their training. During their first year of fellowship, fellows are assigned a faculty advisor to help with career development and to discuss the fellow’s clinical and research interests. Fellows will also attend quarterly research meetings as a part of their core lecture series; these meetings have been designed to help first year fellows identify an area of interest, formulate a research question, and develop a study design and to allow second year fellows to present their research and receive feedback.

Potential areas for scholarly activity for fellows at Mount Sinai include but are not limited to:

  • Antimicrobial stewardship and antibiotic resistance
  • Clinical and translational research including behavioral, epidemiology, genomics and interventional trials
  • HIV laboratory research including pathogenesis, therapeutics and vaccine development
  • Host pathogen interactions
  • Infection control & prevention and hospital epidemiology
  • Molecular diagnostics and epidemiology
  • Transplant infectious disease
  • Virology including coronavirus (SARS CoV2), CMV, flaviviruses, influenza, hepatitis

Fellows will also gain experience in quality improvement projects during their fellowship and will be able to pursue activities in medical education with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, both in the classroom and in the clinical settings. Fellows have the option of a third year of fellowship which would be fully dedicated to research if this is in line with their career path.

Fellows have the option of a third year of fellowship which would be fully dedicated to research if this is in line with their career path.