Qingping Yao

I joined Stony Brook University (SBU) as a Professor, Department of Medicine in 2015 and have since served as the Chief of the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology, Director of the Center of Autoinflammatory Disease, and Zhang Family Endowed Chair in Rheumatology. This Center is one of the few Centers in the US caring for national and international referral patients with autoinflammatory diseases or periodic fever syndromes. After completing my Rheumatology Fellowship training in the Department of Rheumatology at UCLA in 2008, I joined the Cleveland Clinic, where I served as a Senior Staff Rheumatologist in the Department of Rheumatic and Immunologic Diseases, and inaugural Director of the Clinic for Adult Autoinflammatory Disease until 2015. With my curiosity and diligence, I led reporting the new disease in 2011, Yao syndrome (American Journal of Medicine), formerly designated as NOD2-associated autoinflammatory disease (Journal of American Academy of Dermatology). This disease is collected in the disease database, Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) (Yao syndrome, YAOS, #617321) and an ICD10 code (MO4.8) was assigned by CDC. I created and have managed the Center of Autoinflammatory Diseases at Stony Brook University serving as a referral hub for patients with autoinflammatory diseases from across the country. My scientific career really started in late 1980s when I obtained Master’s degree in Microbiology and Immunology in China. In 1990s after obtaining PhD with my thesis of Tripterygium Wilfordii Hook in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, I stayed and served as an attending Rheumatologist and associate Professor of Medicine at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, one of the most prestigious medical institutions. In 1997, I came to the Division of Rheumatology, Columbia University to conduct research on collagen induced arthritis. My previous research on gene therapy for rheumatoid arthritis in the famous laboratories of Drs. Paul Robbins and Christopher Evans at the University of Pittsburgh has laid a foundation for my further study of rheumatic disorders in relation to the genomic medicine. Recently I led proposing and defining a new concept in genomic medicine, Genetically Transitional Disease (Trends in Genetics). I was fortunate to train and have happily contributed to patient care, research, and education in the highly prestigious academic institutions in both the US and China during my career. Overall, as a physician/scientist I have strived to investigate rheumatic disease in an innovative way. In addition, I love to mentor medical trainees and junior faculty.