The Department of Biomedical Sciences (BMS) in the College of Veterinary Medicine was conceived in 1998 under Dean Don Smith. It began as a merger of Anatomy, Physiology, and a part of Pathology. The goal of the new BMS department with inaugural Chair Michael Kotlikoff was two-fold: (1) to continue the mission of top-level instruction in anatomy, pathology, and physiology in the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM), graduate, and undergraduate curricula and (2) to grow world-class externally-funded research in basic and translational science, with an emphasis on mammalian models of disease and molecular and/or genome-scale approaches. Mark Roberson Chaired the department from 2007 to 2017 and Paul Soloway Chaired the department from 2017 to 2023. In 2022, under the leadership of Dean Lorin Warnick, the Anatomic Pathology section of the department moved to Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences (PMDS). Praveen Sethupathy became Chair in 2023. Over the past twenty-five years, BMS has emerged as a leading department at Cornell in terms of animal resources and education, teaching and course development, academic coaching, college and university level administrative leadership, Center directorship, federal and non-federal grant funding, basic science research output, and translational/clinical discovery. 

BMS has a strong tradition of faculty stepping up to serve as leaders at the college- and university-level to advance life sciences education and/or research. Faculty and staff in our department have served and/or currently serve in a variety of important leadership roles, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Chair of CVM Staff Council
• Chair of CVM Belonging at Cornell committee
• Chair of Barbara McClintock Life Sciences Lecture committee
• Director of the DVM curriculum
• Course Leaders of Foundation Course I and III
• Director of undergraduate Physiology
• Director of Graduate Studies for different graduate fields including Biomedical and Biological Sciences (BBS) and Genetics, Genomics and Development (GGD)
• Director of Core Facilities including the Transgenic Core, the Progressive Assessment of Therapeutics (PATh) PDX Facility, and the ScanScope Unit
• Director of Preclinical Services Core
• Director of CARE
• Director of CVM Equine Programs
• Founder of entrepreneurial entities and non-profit organizations including Embark and FARVets
• Director of various university-wide interdisciplinary institutes and centers including the Baker Institute for Animal Health, Cornell Reproductive Sciences Center (CoRe), Center for Vertebrate Genomics (CVG), the Comparative Cancer Biology (CCB) Program, and the Stem Cell Program (SCP)
• Executive committee of the Cornell FIRST program
• Chair of A.D. White Professor-at-Large program
• Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education in the CVM
• Associate Vice Provost for Life Sciences in the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation (OVPRI)
• Senior Associate Dean at the Graduate School
• Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine
• Provost of the University
• Interim President of the University