David F Yankelevitz, MD

Dr. David Yankelevitz is a Professor of Radiology and the Director of the Lung Biopsy Service at the Icahn School of Medicine. He is a world-recognized expert on Fine Needle Aspirations (FNAs) of lung nodules and he has developed one of the largest FNA practices in the United States -- performing over 10,000 FNA procedures over the course of his career.

Also a researcher, Dr. Yankelevitz’s main academic interest is in the evaluation of treatments for early-diagnosed lung cancer; and he has been the Co-Principal Investigator of the Initiative for Early Lung Cancer Research on Treatment (IELCART) since its inception in 2015. As part of that program, and in order to advance the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer, one of his contributions was to develop the idea of evaluating lung nodule growth rates to create benchmark measurements that assess cancer risk.  In addition to the IELCART research, Yankelevitz has, for the past 20 years, been a Co-Principal Investigator of the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program (I-ELCAP) – a lung cancer screening study which, to date, has screened  over 79,000 people in 10 countries around the world; and he has been Principal Investigator on four National Cancer Institute (NCI) grants.

Dr. Yankelevitz has co-authored over 300 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and he has trained 40 Research Fellows in thoracic imaging.  Prior to joining the faculty at Mount Sinai in 2010, he was a Professor of Radiology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.