Robert W. Finberg, MD, was a highly accomplished physician, infectious disease researcher, and teacher whose career spanned four decades. He was an internationally renowned physician-scientist and served as chair of the Department of Medicine at the UMass Chan Medical School/UMass Memorial Health for 21 years. With more than 300 publications and 40 years of continuous NIH funding, Dr. Finberg's research contributed enormously to our understanding of viral receptors and entry to host responses and he was widely recognized as an expert on influenza and SARS-CoV-2. 

For more than two decades, Dr. Finberg served as an attending physician on the transplant infectious diseases service at UMass Memorial Health, while skillfully directing educational, clinical, and research activities in the largest academic department at UMass Chan Medical School. He was a dedicated and gifted clinician, who compassionately cared for immunocompromised patients, often with complex infectious disease problems. He proudly served as a member of the Board of Trustees for UMass Memorial Health for many years, sharing his knowledge and expertise with board members and other leaders to make key decisions for the health system. He was also a strong advocate for faculty and staff development, overseeing three residency programs and fellowship training programs in more than 16 specialty and subspecialty areas.

When he was named a distinguished professor of medicine and chair emeritus in 2020, Dr. Finberg said that he was “most proud of his contributions to the career development of the many students, residents and faculty members whose illustrious careers and achievements have brought international recognition to our medical school and health system.”

The Finberg Physician-Scientist Training Program at UMass Chan Medical School is named in honor of Dr. Finberg in recognition of his life and career, and the impact he had on the careers of the countless trainees and junior faculty who he mentored.

In memoriam: Robert W. Finberg