May 7, 2019—(BRONX, N.Y.)—Sanjay Gupta, M.D., CNN’s award-winning chief medical correspondent, will deliver the keynote address at the 2019 commencement ceremony for Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon, has covered major health stories from around the world, including the successful 27-hour surgical separation of conjoined twins Jadon and Anias McDonald at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore (CHAM) in 2016.

Einstein’s 61st graduation will be held Thursday, May 23 at 3 p.m. at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall. This year’s ceremony marks the first time Einstein will confer its own degrees, after achieving degree-granting authority earlier this year. Dr. Gupta will receive an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Einstein at the event.

“Dr. Gupta is an inspiring physician whose careful reporting has educated viewers around the world on important topics, including the opioid crisis, health care reform, pandemic outbreaks, and cancer,” said Gordon F. Tomaselli, M.D., the Marilyn and Stanley M. Katz Dean at Einstein and executive vice president and chief academic officer at Montefiore Medicine. “Now more than ever, our graduates will appreciate his insights into the importance of communicating his views on evidence-based science and medicine.”

Dr. Gupta’s  reporting has taken him from U.S. Navy battlefield medical units in Baghdad and harrowing rescue missions with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan to devastated areas hit by natural disasters in New Orleans, Haiti, Japan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Puerto Rico. Dr. Gupta has performed life-saving brain surgery five times in a desert operating room, investigated the deadly Ebola outbreak in Conakry Guinea Africa, and reported on the Flint, Michigan water crisis and Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida. He has won two Emmy awards, and contributed to the network’s Peabody Award-winning coverage of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He also contributed to CNN’s coverage of the 2004 tsunami in South Asia, which won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award, and he earned a DuPont-Columbia Award for his enterprise reporting in the primetime documentaries, “WEED.”

Dr. Gupta chronicled the McDonald twins’ dramatic surgery at CHAM, then followed their recovery and hosted a special report, “Separated: Saving The Twins,” an in-depth account of the boys’ life before, during, and after their operation. The report won the News & Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Science, Medical, and Environmental Reporting in 2018.

“Dr. Gupta’s compassionate and knowledgeable operating room reports on Jadon and Anias provided viewers with a front-row seat to the remarkable work of Montefiore’s team of surgeons, physicians, nurses, and healthcare specialists,” said Steven M. Safyer, M.D., President and CEO of Montefiore Medicine. “He helped the world witness Montefiore’s and Einstein’s medical and scientific prowess, cutting-edge technology, and outstanding patient care and he did it with the greatest sensitivity to the risks faced by these boys and their family.”

Dr. Gupta, a graduate of University of Michigan Medical School, completed a neurosurgical fellowship at the Semmes Murphey Clinic and a residency at the University of Michigan Medical Center. He is a member of the staff and faculty at the Emory University School of Medicine and associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital.

Dr. Gupta currently hosts CNN’s Chasing Life, is also host of Vital Signs on CNN and CNN International, contributes to the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes, and is executive producer of the HBO Documentary Unit. He is author of three New York Times best-selling books, “Chasing Life,”  “Cheating Death,” and “Monday Mornings.”