The edge of the Streeterville neighborhood, where Chicago’s medical district begins to assert itself in glass and concrete, can be reached by walking east from Michigan Avenue toward the lake on Superior Street. It’s difficult to miss the 625,000-square-foot, twelve-story Louis A. Simpson and Kimberly K. Querrey Biomedical Research Center, which opened in 2019. It was built at a cost of $560 million, and the way it connects to the current Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center indicates that the school was considering scale long before that building was constructed. A large amount of the work at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine is done here. It’s important to comprehend the nature of that work.
Feinberg is not a brand-new organization trying to get attention. Before the Civil War ended, in 1859, it was established as Lind University’s medical department. In 1870, it merged with Northwestern to become the Chicago Medical College, and it has operated continuously ever since. Following a $75 million donation from a foundation whose founding family had a personal connection to Northwestern Memorial Hospital—Reuben Feinberg had been admitted there for a heart attack, made his first donation there in 1988, and continued to give—the name Feinberg was adopted in 2002. Instead of emerging in a single pivotal moment, this type of institutional history quietly accumulates over 165 years.
The school’s goals are made tangible by the research figures. External competitive research grants totaled $706 million during the 2022–2023 academic year. When it came to NIH funding, the school was ranked 15th out of all American medical schools. The scope of the research is noteworthy, encompassing fields such as cancer biology, neuroscience, epigenetics, immunology, epidemiology, and translational sciences. It’s not a headline figure at the top, but it’s a consistent, serious position. Stem cell cores, genomics, and bioinformatics are just a few of the more than 35 core research facilities on campus. Feinberg’s research identity may not be defined by a single field, which might be the point. Range appears to be valued at the school.
The list of alumni is truly impressive. The Mayo Clinic was founded by Charles Horace Mayo, a member of the 1888 class. America’s first successful pericardial heart surgery was carried out by Daniel Hale Williams, Class of 1883. In 1967, Thomas Starzl, a member of the 1952 class, performed the first successful liver transplant. The original patent for the HPV vaccine that eventually became Gardasil was created by C. Richard Schlegel, Class of 1972. Janet Woodcock, a 1977 graduate, was the FDA’s acting commissioner. Over the course of more than 150 years, the list continues to produce individuals who go on to lead organizations, update medical textbooks, or influence public health policy. It’s difficult to ignore that pattern and question what the school is doing specifically well, or if its size, age, and Chicago location are just advantages.
It’s difficult to get in. 7,836 candidates vied for 145 seats in the most recent entering class that was reviewed publicly. The median MCAT score was 520, which is in the approximately 97th percentile nationwide, and the median GPA for accepted students was 3.92. These figures are comparable to those of any medical school in the nation. Northwestern Memorial Hospital has been named to the U.S. News Honor Roll, and Shirley Ryan AbilityLab is ranked as the top teaching hospital in the country for physical medicine and rehabilitation.
Feinberg’s recent research includes a study that suggests epilepsy interventions can start at 15 weeks of pregnancy, long before symptoms manifest, and a study that focuses on how metformin functions in the gut rather than the system. Researchers have been examining the immune pathways that cause neuropathic pain in diabetes and the biological similarities between autism and schizophrenia. It’s genuinely unclear if any of these threads will lead to a clinical breakthrough in five or ten years. Research operates in this manner. However, Feinberg’s output volume and consistency point to a machine operating at maximum capacity with sufficient institutional support to continue regardless of any one outcome.
