After graduating from Hamilton College as a chemistry major, Richard Edelson received his MD from the Yale School of Medicine. He then sequentially trained in internal medicine at the University of Chicago, dermatology in the Harvard Program, and cancer immunology at NIH.

Before being recruited back to his alma mater as chairman and professor of the YSM Department of Dermatology in 1986, he was director of the Immunobiology Group in Columbia Universitys Comprehensive Cancer Center, associate director of that institutions General Clinical Research Center, and professor and director of research in Columbias Dermatology Department.

While on the Yale faculty, he served continuously as chairman of the Department of Dermatology (1986-2022), and at overlapping times, has also been the director of the Yale University Comprehensive Cancer Center (2003-2009), YSM deputy dean overseeing all clinical departments (2000-2003), Leader of the YSM Cancer Centers Lymphoma Research Program and the YSM faculty representative to the Yale New Haven Hospital Board of Trustees.

On Oct. 1, 2022, after serving as departmental chairman for 37 years (the longest duration of any Yale University departmental chairman in University history), he resigned the position, while remaining a full-time professor of dermatology.

He was recently announced as the recipient of the first Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) grant in the United States, which is an outgrowth of President Bidens Cancer Moonshot program.

The nearly $25 million award, titled Curing the Uncurable via RNA Encoded Immunogene Tuning, aims to train the immune system to better fight cancer and other diseases by educating specific immune cells with mRNA technology. Philip Santangelo, of Emory and Georgia Tech, is the principal investigator, who will provide designer mRNA, and Edelson is a co-principal investigator on the project.

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Yales Richard Edelson on what got him started in research for ... - The Cancer Letter