Betty Diamond received an MD from Harvard Medical School. She performed a residency in Internal Medicine at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, and then a post-doctoral fellowship in Immunology with Dr. Matthew Scharff at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is currently Director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research.

Dr. Diamond’s research has focused on the induction and pathogenicity of anti-DNA antibodies in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus. She showed that somatic mutation of immunoglobulin genes can generate autoantibodies in mice and humans, making the germinal center a focus in disease pathogenesis. She has studied the influence of hormones on B cell selection. Her laboratory has also demonstrated that a subset of anti-DNA antibodies cross- reacts with the NMDA receptor and showed that autoantibodies can cause aspects of neuropsychiatric lupus, creating a paradigm for antibody-mediated changes in brain function in many conditions. Most recently, she has developed a research program on the immunomodulatory functions of C1q.

She received the Outstanding Investigator Award of the ACR in 2001, the Lee Howley Award from the Arthritis Foundation in 2002, and the Recognition Award from the National Association of MD-PhD Programs in 2004 and the AAI Distinguished Fellow Award in 2019. In 2006, she was elected to the Institute of Medicine and became a fellow of the AAAS. She has served on the Scientific Council of NIAMS and the Board of Directors of the American College of Rheumatology. She is a past President of the American Association of Immunologists.