S. Louis Bridges, Jr., MD, PhD is Physician-in-Chief and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) and Chief of the Division of Rheumatology at Weill Cornell Medical Center (WCCM). From 2008 to 2020, he was Director of the Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He also served as Director of the UAB Comprehensive Arthritis, Musculoskeletal, Bone, and Autoimmunity Center and Director of the UAB T32 Training Program in Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Diseases Research. Dr. Bridges received a BS degree from the University of Notre Dame, and an MD degree from Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans. After serving as a Medicine Resident and Chief Medical Resident at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, he completed a fellowship in Rheumatology at UAB, where he also obtained a PhD degree in Microbiology. His research focus is rheumatoid arthritis susceptibility, autoantibodies, and biomarkers of treatment response. Dr. Bridges has been named to the Best Doctors in America list yearly since 2003, and has received the UAB Department of Medicine’s Max Cooper Award for Research Excellence and the UAB School of Public Health’s Sam Brown Bridge Builder Award. He is former Co-Editor of Arthritis & Rheumatology and former Chair of the NIH Arthritis, Musculoskeletal, and Skin Study Section. Dr. Bridges previously served as Chair of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Committee on Research. He is currently President of the Rheumatology Research Foundation and a member of Executive Committee of the ACR Board of Directors.