Richard D. Granstein

Richard D. Granstein, M.D. is the George W. Hambrick, Jr. Professor and Chairman of the Department of Dermatology at the Weill Cornell Medical College and Dermatologist-in-Chief at the Weill Cornell Campus of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Granstein's clinical interests include skin disorders resulting from abnormal immune system activity, cutaneous lymphomas and both melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer. 

Dr. Granstein’s research interests center on regulation of immune processes within the skin, the role of UV radiation in altering immune responses in the skin and the relevance of the skin immune system to the development of skin cancer. Dr. Granstein's laboratory has identified key pathways by which UV radiation contributes to the development of immune suppression and skin cancer. His research also studies the effects of nervous system influences and stress on the functioning of the immune system. He and his colleagues were the first to demonstrate that immune cells within the epidermis have an anatomic relationship with nerves and can be regulated by factors produced by those nerves with probable relevance to the expression of inflammatory skin diseases. 

Dr. Granstein trained in dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. As a research fellow, he studied immunology and tumor biology at the National Cancer Institute and in the Department of Pathology at Harvard. Dr. Granstein joined the Harvard faculty in 1984. In 1995, Weill Cornell and the New York- Presbyterian Hospital successfully recruited him. Dr. Granstein is a diplomate of the American Board of Dermatology, a Fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology and has served as an officer, a committee member or on the Board of Directors of numerous medical research and clinical societies including the Society for Investigative Dermatology, the American Society for Photobiology the New York Academy of Medicine, the New York Society of Dermatology and Dermatologic Surgery, the Association for Psychocutaneous Medicine of North America and the American Academy of Dermatology. He was honored in 2003 with the Healthcare Industry Good Scout Award of the Greater New York Councils of the Boy Scouts of America, in 2010 with the Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra Memorial Lectureship of the Austrian Society for Dermatology and Venereology, in 2011 with the American Austrian Foundation’s Humes Visiting Professorship and in 2013 by National Rosacea Society for "helping the NRS carry out its mission of improving the lives of the estimated 16 million Americans who suffer from this disorder." In 2016 he was honored with the 39th Kung-sun Oh Memorial Lecturehip of the Cutaneous Biology Research Institute of Yonsei University.