Lewis Lipsitz

Lewis A. Lipsitz, M.D., is the director, the Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research & the chief academic officer at Hebrew SeniorLife.

Throughout the past 30 years Dr. Lipsitz has built a successful career as a widely respected geriatrician, independently funded clinical investigator, skilled teacher, and capable program leader, all while serving on the medical staff of Hebrew SeniorLife (HSL) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). As a Harvard geriatric medicine fellow from 1980 to 1983, then a staff physician and NIH K08 Awardee while primarily at HSL, he built a medical research program focused on common syndromes facing elderly people and acquired a prestigious NIH “Teaching Nursing Home” program project grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to support this work. He has also served as principal investigator of a Hartford Center of Excellence in Geriatric Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Grant for the Advancement of Geriatrics Education at Harvard Medical School, and a Merit Award from the NIA to study the “Nonlinear Dynamics of Frailty in Old Age.”

From 1986 until 1996 Dr. Lipsitz was director of the Harvard Geriatric Fellowship Program. In this capacity he trained more than 80 geriatricians who now hold faculty positions at medical centers around the world. His research accomplishments were recognized at HSL in 1991 when he was named the recipient of the Irving and Edyth S. Usen Chair in Geriatric Research. At the same time, he was appointed co-director of HSL’s Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research, which he has since built into an internationally-recognized, $46-million NIH-funded research enterprise committed to improving the quality of life and care of older people.