Yale has a long tradition of requiring a dissertation based on original research. The M.D. thesis, a requirement since 1839, is an essential part of the curriculum, designed to develop critical judgment, habits of self-education, and application of the scientific method to medicine. The thesis requirement gives students the opportunity to work closely with full-time faculty who are distinguished scientists, clinicians, and scholars. The investigation may have its origins in basic, translational, or clinical science, including bench, outcomes, health services, community-engaged, health equity, and medicine and the humanities (medical ethics, history of medicine, etc.) research. A hypothesis must be defined, experimental methods developed, and data gathered to prove or disprove the hypothesis. Qualitative research designed to generate hypotheses is also encouraged. Students are expected to use state-of-the-art methods appropriate for research and scholarship in each discipline. Students in the advanced training period (ATP) are eligible to earn curricular credit for full-time, mentored research. Stipends are provided for summer and select short-term extracurricular research periods. In addition, there are many national (National Institutes of Health, Sarnoff Foundation, American Heart Association) and Yale-sponsored one-year research fellowships available. Conduct of the research begins in the summer following the first year and is continued during free periods in the third and fourth years. A large number of students elect to take an additional year of medical school to pursue their research projects in greater depth, but this is not a requirement. These students are eligible for a joint M.D.-Master of Health Science (M.H.S.) if all requirements for the joint degree are fulfilled.

A doctoral dissertation in the biological sciences previously accepted as a part of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree may be submitted in lieu of a School of Medicine dissertation at the discretion of the director of the Office of Student Research and the Thesis Committee. Information about the thesis and research opportunities and funding may be obtained from the Office of Student Research, at osr.med@yale.edu or at https://medicine.yale.edu/md-program/research.