Asghar Rastegar

Dr. Asghar Rastegar, is the founding Director of Global Health Program, Department of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, where he oversees collaboration between Yale and 6 international sites in the Sub-Saharan Africa, Indonesia and Colombia, focusing on bilateral human capacity building to improve health in low resource regions. Dr. Rastegar, a native of Iran, received his B.A and M.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He did his postgraduate training in internal medicine and nephrology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He returned to Iran in 1973 as associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Pahlavi (Shiraz) University School of Medicine in Shiraz where he held multiple leadership positions. He returned to the United States in 1983 as the Director of Residency Training and Chief of Clinical Services at the University of Colorado School of Medicine before moving to Yale University School of Medicine as Associate Professor and Chief of Medical Services at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He was promoted to Professor of Medicine as well as Co-Chief of the Nephrology Section and Director of Graduate Medical Education at the Yale New Haven Medical Center. He also served as Associate Chair for Academic Affairs. Dr. Rastegar, winner of many teaching awards, is well known as an educator both in the US and abroad. He has spent much of his academic career as an educational innovator, helping develop educational models for training of students and residents. Internationally he served as Co-Chair of the Education Committee of the International Society of Nephrology. He has been awarded an honorary professorship from Kazan State Medical University in Russia and Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in Iran for his contribution to educational development in those institutions and is an honorary member of the Iranian Academy of Medical Sciences.