CUIMC Celebrates 2019-20, Issue 2

September 13, 2019

CUIMC CELEBRATES acknowledges faculty, staff, and students at Columbia University Irving Medical Center who receive major research grants, who earn prestigious honors, who are elected to honorary societies, or who take leadership positions in professional organizations. Celebrates also gratefully acknowledges the gifts made by donors and friends of the medical center and highlights faculty who have appeared in the news recently. If you have an award or honor that you would like to have listed in Celebrates, please fill out this online form. Please note: All federal grants are automatically included based on institutional data provided by Sponsored Projects Administration. For more information, send an email to the Celebrates editor.

Looking for an older issue? The CUIMC Celebrates archive can be accessed at https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/topics/campus-news/cuimc-celebrates/

RESEARCH GRANTS

New awards of $250,000 and above received through June 2019

VAGELOS COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS

Julian Abrams, MD, Medicine, will receive $2,260,906 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for “The Oral Microbiome for the Detection of Barrett’s Esophagus.”

Rando Allikmets, PhD, Ophthalmology, will receive $2,218,680 over five years from the National Eye Institute for “Integrated Clinical, Genetic and Functional Analysis of the ABCA4 Locus.”

Melissa Arbuckle, MD, PhD, Psychiatry, will receive $540,000 over five years from the New York State Office of Mental Health for the “New York State Office of Mental Health Fellowship Program in Geriatric Psychiatry” and $300,000 over five years from the New York State Office of Mental Health for “Psychiatric Residency Training at New York State Psychiatric Institute (General Adult).”

R. Graham Barr, MD, DrPH, Medicine, and Andrew Laine, DSc, Engineering, will receive a competitive renewal grant of $2,974,864 over four years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for “Novel Quantitative Emphysema Subtypes in MESA and SPIROMICS.”

Jahar Bhattacharya, MD, DPhil, Medicine, will receive $269,694 over 1½ years from Unity Biotech for “Collaborative Project between Unity Biotechnology and Jahar Bhattacharya.”

William Blaner, PhD, Medicine, will receive $1,963,390 over four years from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for “RBP2 Biology and Pathobiology.”

Daria Boccher-Lattimore, DrPH, Psychiatry, will receive $3,734,498 over five years from the HIV/AIDS Bureau/Health Resources and Services Administration for “Regional AIDS Education and Training Centers.”

David Brenner, PhD, DSc, Center for Radiological Research, and Elizabeth Hillman, PhD, Engineering, will receive $2,584,400 over four years from the National Cancer Institute for “Flexible Tools for Pre-Clinical Studies to Answer Key Questions Underlying Heavy-Ion Radiotherapy.” Dr. Brenner also will receive $595,000 over two years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for a subaward of “Monochromatic 222 nm UV Light: Development of Safe, Cost-effective Technology for the Efficient Reduction of Bacterial and Viral Infection and Transmission.”

Jan Claassen, MD, PhD, Neurology, will receive $3,122,942 over five years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for “RECONFIG - REcovery of CONsciousness Following Intracerebral HemorrhaGge.”

Peter Dayan, MD, Emergency Medicine, will receive a competitive renewal grant of $2,799,999 over four years from the Health Resources and Services Administration for “EMSC Network Development Demonstrations Project, Pediatric Emergency Medicine Northeast, West, and South.”

C. Gustavo De Moraes, MD, Ophthalmology, will receive $370,540 over four years from the National Eye Institute for a subaward of “The BCI (Brain Computer Interface) Glaucoma Study: Objective Home-Based Detection of Progressive Visual Function Loss in Glaucoma.”

Lei Ding, PhD, Rehabilitation & Regenerative Medicine, will receive $550,000 over five years from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for “Targeting the Interaction of Leukemia Stem Cells with their Niche to Treat Myelofibrosis.”

Lisa B. Dixon, MD, Psychiatry, and Jennifer Humensky, PhD, Psychiatry, will receive $1,668,645 over five years from the National Institute of Mental Health for “OnTrackNY’s Learning Healthcare System.”

Karen Duff, PhD, Taub Institute, will receive $2,945,809 over five years from the National Institute on Aging for “Differential Vulnerability to Tauopathy in Alzheimer’s Disease and Frontotemporal Lobe Dementia.”

Andrew J. Dwork, MD, Pathology & Cell Biology, will receive a competitive renewal grant of $491,148 over one year from the National Institute of Mental Health for “Application of Advanced Quantitative Methods to Schizophrenia Research in Macedonia.”

Dietrich Egli, PhD, Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center, will receive $467,485 over two years from the National Human Genome Research Institute for “Novel Approaches to Map DNA Replication Traffic in a Genome-wide Scale.”

Mitchell Elkind, MD, Sergievsky Center, will receive a competitive renewal grant of $1,637,170 over five years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for “Neuroepidemiology Training Program.”

Katherine S. Elkington, PhD, Psychiatry; Edward V. Nunes, MD, Psychiatry; and Milton L. Wainberg, MD, Psychiatry, will receive $2,043,447 over five years from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for “Facilitating Opioid Care Connections: System Level Strategies to Improve Use of MAT and Movement Through the Opioid Care Cascade for Defendants in a New Opioid Court System.”

Donna Farber, PhD, Medicine, will receive $607,500 over five years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for a subaward of “Vaccine Induced Immunity in the Young and Aged.”

Adolfo Ferrando, MD, PhD, Institute for Cancer Genetics, will receive $428,056 over six years from the National Cancer Institute for a subaward of “ECOG-ACRIN Integrated Leukemia Translational Science Center.”

Daniel Freedberg, MD, Medicine, will receive $1,890,421 over four years from the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command for “Prebiotic Inulin to Limit Antimicrobial-Resistant Infections During Critical Illness: A Phase II Clinical Trial.”

Vincenzo Gennarino, PhD, Genetics & Development, will receive $2,198,815 over five years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for “Deciphering the Role of Pumilio1 in Two New Neurological Diseases.”

Adam David Griesemer, MD, Surgery, will receive $490,037 over one year from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for “Regeneron iPET Study.”

Michio Hirano, MD, Neurology, will receive $500,000 over one year from the Spinal Muscular Atrophy Foundation for “Pediatric Neuromuscular Clinical Research Network.”

Christina W. Hoven, DrPH, Psychiatry, and George Jose Musa, Psychiatry, will receive $743,053 over five years from the National Institute of Mental Health for “Uncovering the Risk Architecture of Suicidal Behaviors: A Representative Sample at High Risk.”

Antonio Iavarone, MD, Institute for Cancer Genetics, will receive $1,852,845 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for “The Huwe1 Ubiquitin Ligase Regulates Mitosis, Genomic Stability and Oncogenesis.”

Ivaylo Ivanov, PhD, Microbiology & Immunology, will receive $436,646 over two years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for “Discovery of Immunomodulatory Gut Microbes with MAGIC.”

Jonathan A. Javitch, MD, Psychiatry, will receive a competitive renewal grant of $445,500 over two years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for “Impact of Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor Heterodimerization on Signaling and Pharmacology.”

Tuuli Lappalainen, PhD, Systems Biology, will receive $282,854 over five years from the National Institute on Aging for a subaward of “Understanding Cellular and Transcriptional Regulatory Changes in Human Aging.”

Suzanne Leal, PhD, Sergievsky Center, will receive $1,493,592 over four years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for a subaward of “Detecting Pleiotropic Effects through Integration of Omics Data.”

Jennifer Lue, MD, Medicine, will receive $540,571 over 18 months from Kymera Therapeutics for “A Study of Novel Heterobifunctional IRAK4 Degrader in Non-Hodgkin Lymphomas.”

Olena Mamykina, PhD, Biomedical Informatics, will receive $3,284,795 over five years from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for “Dynamically Tailoring Interventions for Problem-Solving in Diabetes Self-Management Using Self-Monitoring Data, a Randomized Controlled Trial.”

Filippo Mancia, PhD, Physiology & Cellular Biophysics; David Fidock, PhD, Microbiology & Immunology; and Matthias Quick, PhD, Neurobiology, will receive $3,460,750 over five years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for “Leveraging PfCRT Structure to Discern Function and Predict Emergence of Drug-Resistant Malaria.”

Jennifer Manly, PhD, Sergievsky Center, will receive $1,982,970 over two years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for a subaward of “VCID and Stroke in a Bi-racial National Cohort.”

Andrew Marks, MD, Physiology & Cellular Biophysics, and Kenneth Shepard, PhD, Engineering, will receive $3,051,328 over four years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for “Structure-function Analysis for Elucidating Pathogenicity of Cardiac Ryanodine Receptor Genetic Variants.”

Mathew Maurer, MD, Medicine, will receive $7,218,419 over five years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for “SCAN-MP (Screening for Cardiac Amyloidosis with Nuclear Imaging in Minority Populations).”

Laura Beth McIntire, PhD, Pathology & Cell Biology, will receive $405,000 over one year from the National Institute on Aging for “Contribution of BIN1 and Synj1 to Endosomal Pathogenesis Alzheimer’s Disease and Down Syndrome.”

Guy McKhann, MD, Neurological Surgery, will receive $787,022 over one year from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for a subaward of “Mechanisms of Rapid, Flexible Cognitive Control in Human Prefrontal Cortex.”

Eliza Miller, MD, Neurology, will receive $958,950 over five years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for “Neurovascular Unit Dysfunction in Women with Severe Preeclampsia.”

Youngji Na, PhD, Medicine, will receive $738,782 over five years from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for “Rare Variant Analysis of Glomerulonephritis.”

Russell Nicholls, PhD, Taub Institute, will receive $454,820 over two years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for “Exploring the Contribution of Viral PP2A Inhibition to Tau Pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease.”

Tal Nuriel, PhD, Taub Institute, will receive $324,000 over two years from the National Institute on Aging for “Utilizing Single-nucleus RNA-sequencing to Investigate the Cell-Type Specific Effects of APOE4 Expression in an AD-vulnerable Brain Region.”

Owen O’Connor, MD, PhD, Medicine, will receive $300,000 over three years from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for “Translating Novel Immunoepigenetic Concepts to the Treatment of T-Cell Lymphomas.”

Michael Pitman, MD, Otolaryngology/Head & Neck Surgery, will receive $3,041,028 over five years from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders for “Mechanisms of Axon Guidance in Laryngeal Reinnervation Following Injury of the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve.”

Jianwen Que, PhD, Medicine, will receive $1,752,596 over four years from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for “Signaling Mechanisms Promoting Barrett’s Metaplasia.”

Steven Roose, MD, Psychiatry, will receive a competitive renewal grant of $1,477,395 over five years from the National Institute of Mental Health for “Research Training in Late-Life Neuropsychiatric Disorders.”

Yvonne Saenger, MD, Medicine, will receive $364,850 over two years from the National Cancer Institute for “A Prognostic mRNA Immune Signature for Resected Stage II-III Melanoma.”

Helen Lilli Schleimer, MD, Psychiatry, will receive $382,050 over five years from the New York State Office of Mental Health for “Psychiatric Residency Training at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center.”

Lawrence Schwartz, MD, Radiology, will receive $355,254 over six years from the National Cancer Institute for a subaward of “SWOG Network Group Operations Center of the NCTN.”

Soumitra Sengupta, PhD, Biomedical Informatics, will receive $275,986 over two years from Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute for a subaward of “INSIGHT Network.”

Carrie Shawber, PhD, Obstetrics & Gynecology, will receive $1,275,809 over three years from the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command for “Genetic Causes and Therapeutic Interventions in Vascular Malformations.”

Neil Shneider, MD, PhD, Neurology, will receive $2,592,000 over four years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for “Mechanisms of FUS Toxicity in Animal and Cellular Models of ALS/FTD.”

Hans-Willem Snoeck, MD, PhD, Medicine, will receive $270,000 over two years from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation for “Lung and Airway Progenitors Derived from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells.”

Yaakov Stern, PhD, Sergievsky Center, will receive $598,435 over three years from the National Institute of Mental Health for a subaward of “Targeting Dopaminergic Mechanisms of Slowing to Improve Late Life Depression (R33 Phase).”

Megan Sykes, MD, Medicine, will receive $436,775 over two years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for “Thymic Negative Selection in Human T1D Immune Systems.”

Nicholas Tatonetti, PhD, Biomedical Informatics, will receive $2,405,345 over five years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences for “Data-driven Drug Discovery: Investigating the Molecular Mechanisms of Safety and Efficacy.”

Stephen Tsang, MD, PhD, Ophthalmology, will receive a competitive renewal grant of $1,502,243 over four years from the National Eye Institute for “Gene Silencing and Gene Editing in Phototransduction.” Dr. Tsang and Janet Sparrow, MD, PhD, Ophthalmology, will receive $810,000 over two years from the National Eye Institute for “Precision Genome Surgery in Autologous Stem Cell Transplant.”

Wendy Vargas Deming, MD, Neurology, will receive $499,764 over three years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for “The Educational Impact of Childhood-Onset Multiple Sclerosis.”

Clarissa Waites, PhD, Pathology & Cell Biology, will receive a competitive renewal grant of $1,899,877 over five years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for “Uncovering the Roles of Ubiquitination and the ESCRT Pathway in Degradative Sorting of SV Proteins.”

Nan Wang, PhD, Medicine, will receive $1,620,000 over four years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for “JAK2V617F, Clonal Hematopoiesis and Atherosclerosis.”

Timothy C. Wang, MD, Medicine, will receive a competitive renewal grant of $1,771,888 over five years from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for “Multidisciplinary Training in Translational Gastrointestinal and Liver Research.”

Carolyn Westhoff, MD, Obstetrics & Gynecology, will receive $301,685 over three years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for “PK/PD Evaluation of Levonorgestrel Butanoate for Female Contraception.”

Hynek Wichterle, PhD, Pathology & Cell Biology, will receive $438,800 over two years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for “Multiplex Modeling of ALS with Barcoded Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Lines.”

Howard Worman, MD, Medicine, and Henry Ginsberg, MD, Medicine, will receive $2,113,070 over four years from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for “Nuclear Envelope, Lipoprotein Metabolism, and Hepatic Steatosis.”

June Wu, MD, Surgery, will receive $1,021,853 over three years from the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command for “Genetic Causes and Therapeutic Interventions in Vascular Malformations.”

MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Wafaa El-Sadr, MD, ICAP, will receive $883,403 over two years from FHI 360/ViiV Healthcare for “Harlem HPTN 083: A Phase 2b/3 Double Blind Safety and Efficacy Study of Injectable Cabotegravir Compared to Daily Oral Tenofovir Disoproxil for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis in HIV-Uninfected Cisgender Men.” Dr. El-Sadr also will receive $872,785 over two years from FHI 360/ViiV Healthcare for “Bronx HPTN 083: A Phase 2b/3 Double Blind Safety and Efficacy Study of Injectable Cabotegravir Compared to Daily Oral Tenofovir Disoproxil for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis in HIV-Uninfected Cisgender Men.”

Ruby Fayorsey, MD, ICAP, will receive $2,344,865 over three months from the U.S. Agency for International Development as the initial funding for a five-year subaward of “Meeting Targets and Maintaining Epidemic Control.”

Markus Hilpert, PhD, Environmental Health Sciences, and Amelia Boehme, PhD, Epidemiology, will receive $436,491 over two years from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for “Crowd-Sourced Traffic Data: Predicting Air Pollution & Acute Ischemic Stroke.”

Katherine Keyes, PhD, Epidemiology, will receive $1,892,669 over five years from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for “As Adolescent Substance Use Declines, Internalizing Symptoms Increase: Identifying High-risk Substance Using Groups and the Role of Social Media, Parental Supervision, and Unsupervised Time.”

Terry McGovern, JD, Population and Family Health, will receive $450,000 over three years from the NoVo Foundation for “Ending Gender Based Violence in Tunisia and Lebanon.”

Ian McKeague, PhD, Biostatistics, will receive $1,491,746 over five years from the National Institute on Aging for “Inferential Methods for Functional Data from Wearable Devices.”

Regina Santella, PhD, Environmental Health Sciences, will receive $325,278 over one year from the California Breast Cancer Research Program for a subaward of “PAHs and Puberty in Girls at Increased Breast Cancer Risk.” Beizhan Yan at Lamont Doherty is co-PI.

Terry McGovern, JD, Population and Family Health, will receive $450,000 over three years from the NoVo Foundation for “Ending Gender Based Violence in Tunisia and Lebanon.”

Goleen Samari, PhD, Population and Family Health, is co-PI.

Wan Yang, PhD, Epidemiology, will receive $2,505,995 over five years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for “Disease Persistence and Population Dynamics: Modeling Measles under Mass Vaccination.” Jeffrey Shaman, PhD, Environmental Health Sciences is co-PI.

SCHOOL OF NURSING

Billy Caceres, PhD, Scholarship & Research, will receive $854,887 over five years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for “Examining Associations of Sexual Identity, Life Experiences, and Cardiovascular Disease Risk in Sisters.”

AWARDS & HONORS

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IRVING MEDICAL CENTER

Interdisciplinary Teaching Awards

The Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation has announced the Spring 2019 faculty grants awarded for programs that develop innovative and technology-rich pedagogy and learning strategies inside the classroom and beyond its walls. The awards to CUIMC researchers are in the categories of interdisciplinary teaching, start-small mini grants, hybrid learning course redesign and delivery, and large-scale teaching & learning. The awards are the first of the new Interdisciplinary Teaching Awards designed to support faculty from different disciplines to work collaboratively on the design and launch of innovative interdisciplinary undergraduate or graduate courses.

CUIMC recipients:

Jonathan Amiel, MD, VP&S Curriculum Affairs, Large-Scale Teaching & Learning Grant: “Redesigning the Pre-Clerkship Curriculum with Deep Integration, Active Learning, and Competency-Based Assessment with Coaching”
Rita Charon, MD, PhD, Medical Humanities & Ethics, Interdisciplinary Teaching: “Graduate Symposium in Medical Humanities”
Helen de Pinho, MBBCh, Mailman Population and Family Health, Start-Small Mini Grant: “Digital Instruction for Public Health Policy Advocacy”
Vicky Evangelidis-Sakellson, DDS, CDM, Start-Small Mini Grant: “Moving Beyond Lectures: Active Strategies for Transforming an Interdisciplinary Case-Based Review Course”
Lauren Houghton, PhD, Mailman Epidemiology, and Noémie Elhadad, PhD, VP&S Biomedical Informatics, Interdisciplinary Teaching: “Menstruation, Gender and Rights: Interdisciplinary Approaches for Addressing Complex Questions”
Ana Maria Kelly, PhD, Nursing, Start-Small Mini Grant: “Implementing Case-Based Learning through Technology into Medical-Surgical Nursing Education”
Martina Pavlicova, PhD, Mailman Biostatistics, Hybrid Learning Course Redesign and Delivery: “Creating Online Version of the Course to Target the Broad Audience and Implementing Team Based Learning”
Katherine Shear, MD, VP&S Psychiatry, Hybrid Learning Course Redesign and Delivery: “Developing Students’ Clinical Skills via the Use of Scripted Realistic Client-Therapist Videos for Targeted Fine-Grained Practice and Meaningful Instructor Feedback and Coaching”
Pallavi Utukuri, MD, VP&S, Radiology, Hybrid Learning Course Redesign and Delivery: “Re-Imagining Radiology Education: An Interactive Blended Learning Approach to Radiology Education Using the Flipped Classroom Pedagogy”
Laureen Zubiaurre Bitzer, DMD, CDM; Shubha Dathatri, PhD, Center for Education Research and Evaluation (CERE); James Fine, DMD, CDM; and Aubrie Swan Sein, PhD, CERE, Large-Scale Teaching & Learning Grant: “Developing Dental Students as Primary Care Resources: Enhancing Clinical Education through an Innovative, Active-Learning-Oriented Educator Development Program”

Provost Leadership Fellows

The Provost Leadership Fellows Program is designed for faculty members at Columbia who seek to complement their research and scholarly activities with administrative and leadership responsibilities. Four CUIMC faculty members were selected for the 2019-21 class:

Elisa Konofagou, PhD, VP&S Radiology
Jose Luchsinger, MD, VP&S Medicine and Mailman Epidemiology
Christine Rohde, MD, VP&S Surgery
Marni Sommer, DrPH, Mailman Sociomedical Sciences

2019 Irving Institute Mentors of the Year

Donna Farber, PhD, VP&S Surgery
Henry Ginsberg, MD, VP&S Medicine
Harold Pincus, MD, VP&S Psychiatry

Columbia Biomedical Technology Accelerator

CUIMC members on six projects were awarded 2019 funding from the Columbia Biomedical Technology Accelerator:

Daichi Shimbo, MD, VP&S Medicine, “Cuffless, Non-invasive, and Self-calibrating Device for Accurate and Ambulatory Measurements of Blood Pressure”
Zev Williams, MD, PhD, VP&S Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Shan Wei, PhD, VP&S Obstetrics & Gynecology, “Rapid, Point-of-care, Low-cost Aneuploidy Screening Using a Handheld Nanopore-based DNA Sequencer”
Lance C. Kam, PhD, VP&S Medicine, and Pawel J. Muranski, MD, VP&S Medicine and VP&S Pathology & Cell Biology, “Improved T Cell Production through Immunomesh”
Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, PhD, University Professor, “Biomimetic Lung Sealant to Rapidly Heal Pulmonary Air Leaks, Decrease Recovery Time, and Reduce Healthcare Costs”
Wendy Chung, MD, PhD, VP&S Pediatrics, “A Novel CRISPR/Cas 9 Based Mutation Correction Method for Hemoglobinopathies”
Mildred C. Embree, DMD, PhD, CDM, and Mo Chen, PhD, CDM, “Drug Based Modulation of Endogenous Fibrocartilage Stem Cells for TMJ Regeneration”

VAGELOS COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS

Louis V. Gerstner Jr. Scholars Program

Four physician-scientists have been named 2019 Louis V. Gerstner Jr. Scholars, and a fifth physician-scientist has been named a 2019 Louis V. Gerstner Jr. Merit Awardee. The Gerstner Scholars Program supports tenure-track physicians who conduct research that has the promise to bring new treatments to patients. The program also presents the Gerstner Merit Award to a third-year Louis V. Gerstner Jr. Scholar who has made great strides in research.

Gerstner Scholars

Alejandro (Alex) Chavez, MD, PhD, Pathology & Cell Biology
Amélie Collins, MD, PhD, Pediatrics
Maya Mikami, MD, PhD, Anesthesiology
Vidhu Thaker, MD, Pediatrics

Gerstner Merit Award

Thomas Connors, MD, Pediatrics

Research Initiatives in Science and Engineering (RISE) Awards

The RISE competition supports early-stage, imaginative, and collaborative discoveries at Columbia spanning the basic sciences, engineering, and medicine. Four VP&S faculty are on teams that received 2019 RISE awards.

Iok (Christine) Chio, PhD, Genetics & Development, “Genome Wide Transcriptomic and Protein Life Cycle Profiling to Identify Key Regulatory Events that Drive Metastatic Transformation in Pancreatic Cancer”
Dani Dumitrui, MD, PhD, Pediatrics, “Novel Telemetry for Studying Wild Rats in the Wild”
Laura Landweber, PhD, Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics, and Sam Sternberg, PhD, Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics, “Deciphering and Harnessing Chromosome Rearrangements in Oxytricha for Genome Engineering”

Other Honors

Paul S. Appelbaum, MD, Psychiatry, received a Distinguished Service Award from the American Psychiatric Association.

Carolyn Britton, MD, Neurology, received the 2019 W. Montague Lifetime Achievement Award from the W. Montague Cobb/NMA Institute.

Wendy Chung, MD, PhD, Pediatrics, received a 2019 Rare Impact Award from the National Organization for Rare Disorders.

LeWanza M. Harris, MD, Medicine, has been elected a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine.

Among the 111 Next Gen Innovators named this year by the publication HemOnc Today is Matthew Ingham, MD, Medicine. Next Gen Innovators are early career hematologists and oncologists.

Tal Korem, PhD, Systems Biology, has been named a 2019-21 CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar, a fellowship that supports leading early-career researchers in science and technology.

Stephanie Lovinsky-Desir, MD, Pediatrics, and Jennifer Woo Baidal, MD, Pediatrics, have been selected to join the initiative Health Data for New York City (HD4NYC) to help reduce disparities in asthma and obesity between low-income and wealthier neighborhoods. HD4NYC, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded research collaboration between the New York Academy of Medicine and the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, is giving physician-scientists unprecedented access to health data collected by the city’s health department.

MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Linda P. Fried, MD, MPH, Dean, received the Alma Dea Morani Renaissance Woman Award bestowed by the Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation. The award recognizes an outstanding contemporary pioneer in medicine or science who has demonstrated a thirst for knowledge and service. In addition to co-founding Experience Corps, Dr. Fried has been the principal investigator on the Women’s Health and Aging Study.

Diana Hernández, PhD, Sociomedical Sciences, was awarded the Public Health Service Award from the New York League of Puerto Rican Women. She was honored at the league’s 11th anniversary scholarship gala in the Bronx in August. The league’s mission is the advancement of Puerto Rican/Hispanic women through higher education. Dr. Hernandez also was appointed by NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio to be a member of the Environmental Justice Advisory Board for a three-year term from 2019 to 2022.

Grace Hillyer, EdD, Epidemiology, was selected to present findings from her study, “Comparison of attitudes and beliefs about cancer clinical trial enrollment between physicians, research staff, and cancer patients,” at the 2019 Quality Care Symposium of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in September.

Rachel Shelton, ScD, Sociomedical Sciences, filmed a half-day course in implementation science at the University of Minnesota for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The film will be part of the curriculum for the Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program.

Ashwin Vasan, MD, PhD, Population and Family Health and Medicine, was appointed president and CEO of Fountain House. He will advance Fountain House’s work around mental illness, health care, homelessness, criminal justice, and social welfare for marginalized people and communities. He maintains his academic affiliation with Columbia while leading Fountain House.

SCHOOL OF NURSING

Columbia University School of Nursing received two awards from the Greater New York City - Black Nurses Association. The school was chosen to receive the Presidents Organizational Support Award, and Vivian Taylor, EdD, received the Friends of Nursing Award for her work, including addressing health disparities and health literacy in the community.

Lorraine Frazier, PhD, Dean, and two other members of the faculty were selected by Crain’s New York Business as 2019 Notable Women in Health Care. Emeritus Dean Mary Mundinger, DrPH, and Assistant Dean Wilhelmina Manzano also made the list.

Kenrick Cato, PhD; Kathleen Mullen, DNP; and Maxim Topaz, PhD, received $150,000 from the Columbia Data Science Institute through the Collaboratory Fellows Fund to fund the development of a course titled “Data Science for Better Health Outcomes: A Nursing Perspective.”

Tonda Hughes, PhD, was elected a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine.

Rita Marie John, DNP, was named Author of the Year by the journal Nurse Practitioner.

Sarah Collins Rossetti, PhD, received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), which is conferred annually and is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on scientists and engineers who are beginning their independent research careers and show exceptional promise for leadership in science and technology.

Patricia Stone, PhD, was inducted into the Sigma Theta Tau International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame for her contributions to nursing research. She also received the 2019 Ada Sue Hinshaw Award from the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research, which recognizes her role as a prominent senior scientist.

COLLEGE OF DENTAL MEDICINE

CDM received two QARR Dental Center of Excellence Awards in July from DentaQuest in recognition of the school’s work to expand access to preventive oral health care for Medicaid and Medicaid/CHIP-eligible children and young adults covered by Affinity Health Plan and Healthfirst. CDM placed second in the academic dental center/hospital category for awards from both plans.

PHILANTHROPIC GIFTS

Gifts received from July 2, 2019-August 15, 2019

VAGELOS COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS

A bequest of $1,600,000 was realized to support scholarships at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

An anonymous donor made a $1,000,000 commitment to support research in immune tolerance at the Columbia Center for Translational Immunology.

A bequest of $800,000 was realized to advance research in the Pancreas Center and in the Toni Stabile Osteoporosis Center.

A donor made a $750,000 commitment to provide recruitment and research support for the Department of Urology.

An anonymous donor made a $414,644 contribution to advance research and care in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

A donor made a $250,000 contribution to the Department of Ophthalmology to advance research aimed at preventing and delaying age-related macular degeneration.

A donor documented a bequest intention of $210,000 to support the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

A donor made a $200,000 commitment to provide scholarship support to the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

A donor made a $150,000 commitment to support research and clinical care in the Department of Medicine.

A donor made a $111,560 contribution to advance genetics research and care in the Division of Molecular Genetics.

A donor made a $100,000 gift to the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism to advance research in pediatric endocrine disease.

An organization made a $100,000 commitment to advance research and clinical care in non-verbal learning disabilities in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

A donor made a $100,000 gift to support Columbia’s Heart Valve Center.

SCHOOL OF NURSING

A foundation supported Columbia Nursing’s Helene Fuld Health Trust Simulation Center with a grant of $500,000. The two-year grant will support the use of standardized patients in simulation scenarios, EMR licenses for students, and faculty training.

CUIMC IN THE NEWS

Notable Women in Healthcare 2019

Crain’s New York Business | Aug. 5, 2019

This year’s list of Crain’s Notable Women in Health Care includes three from Columbia Nursing.

US discards thousands of donated kidneys each year as patients die on waitlist, study says

USA Today | Aug. 29, 2019

“They should definitely be used and are definitely viable,” said Sumit Mohan, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University in New York City. “Kidneys from diabetic donors do remarkably well.”

U.N. warns climate change could trigger global food crisis

MSNBC | Aug. 9, 2019

A new climate report holds a stark warning about the world’s food supply. Ali Velshi speaks to former Department of Agriculture researcher Lewis Ziska (currently at the Mailman School of Public Health), who quit the Trump administration when his research was repressed, about what we can do to mitigate disaster.

Lyme Disease is Baffling, Even to Experts

The Atlantic magazine | September 2019

The antagonism was “fierce and alienating for the patients,” Brian Fallon, the director of the Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, told me. “And that didn’t make sense to these patients, who were well until they got Lyme, and then they were sick.”

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