CUIMC Update - March 5, 2025

March 5, 2025

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CUIMC Update is a weekly e-newsletter featuring medical center news and the accomplishments of our faculty, staff, and trainees. Please send your news, honors, and awards to cuimc_update@cumc.columbia.edu. Grants are provided by the Sponsored Projects Administration office.

News

Columbia Mailman Launches Climate and Health Center
In response to the worsening climate crisis, the Mailman School of Public Health is launching the Center for Achieving Resilience in Climate and Health to serve as a “solutions lab” that will build resiliency to health impacts of climate change.

Eat Right to Sleep Right
People will try anything to get a good night’s sleep. What if the answer is in your kitchen? Marie-Pierre St-Onge, an expert in nutrition and public health, explains the link between eating, drinking, and sleeping, including recipes that promote both sleep and heart health.

Chrystelle Vilfranc: Building a Bridge Between Researchers and Community
After a career transition from cancer biology research to community outreach, Chrystelle Vilfranc is fostering collaboration between Columbia’s cancer researchers and the community to bridge the gap between scientific discovery and public impact.

Unlicensed Retailers Provide Youths with Easy Access to Cannabis in New York City
Most unlicensed cannabis retailers in New York City ignore state regulations aimed at preventing youths from purchasing their products, Columbia researchers have found.

Events

Grants

Mailman School of Public Health

  • Gary Miller, Environmental Health Sciences
    $7,722,583 over five years from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for "NEXUS: Network for Exposomics in the U.S."

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

  • Mark Ansorge, Psychiatry
    $938,693 over five years for a subaward from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for "Differentiating the roles and underlying mechanisms of serotonin in the gut epithelium and ENS to create a novel drug delivery system to treat disorders of gut-brain interaction and mood dysfunction."
  • Rossana Calderon Moreno, Medicine
    $833,220 over five years from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for "Modulatory effects of a retinoid related protein on intestinal endocrine cells."
  • Daniel Javitt, Christoph Juchem, and Pejman Sehatpour, Psychiatry
    $3,629,706 over four years from the National Institute of Mental Health for "Use of alpha-frequency deep transcranial interference stimulation (tIS) to understand and modify temporal dynamics of face emotion recognition and social/affective function."
  • Jordan Nestor, Medicine
    $666,574 over four years from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for "Digital Tools for Precision Nephrology."
  • Catherine Spina, Radiation Oncology
    $3,378,825 over three years from Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research for "Biological implications of radiopharmaceutical therapy in tumor and normal tissue in preclinical models."
  • Guang Yang, Anesthesiology
    $2,261,875 over five years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences for "The roles of anesthetics and neuroimmune interactions in postoperative cognitive dysfunction."

Honors

College of Dental Medicine

  • The Columbia University College of Dental Medicine chapter of the American Student Dental Association, District 2, was awarded Chapter of the Year and recognized with the Outstanding Outreach Initiatives Award at the ASDA District 2 meeting.

Social Media Snapshot

Columbia University Irving Medical Center(link is external and opens in a new window)

Meet Renu Nandakumar(link is external and opens in a new window), PhD. She directs the Biomarkers Core facility, which identifies and measures molecules that are the readouts of everything that happens within the body. With a single sample, her lab can detect tens of thousands of markers of health.

Behind the Scenes: Mining for Markers of Health

In the News Highlights