Louis Bridges MD, PhD

S. Louis Bridges, Jr., MD, PhD is Physician-in-Chief and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS). He also serves as Chief of the Division of Rheumatology at HSS and Weill Cornell Medical Center. Dr. Bridges is currently President of the Rheumatology Research Foundation and a member of Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). 

Dr. Bridges previously served as Chair of the ACR Committee on Research and as a member of several other ACR committees. 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. He has authored more than 150 manuscripts, more than 20 book chapters, and served as editor of three editions of the book Vasculitis. 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.