CUIMC Update - October 23, 2024

October 23, 2024

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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

Velocity Ride Brings Together Columbia Community in Fight Against Cancer
The Columbia community and supporters gathered in the Hudson Valley on Oct. 6 for the eighth annual Velocity: Columbia’s Ride to End Cancer. This year’s Velocity attracted nearly 600 participants, including a cohort of five teams from the Faculty Practice Organization. Read more and see photos.

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month
The medical center celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month this year with a host of events throughout the month, including a festival, networking reception, panel, and student activities. Read more and see photos.

Columbia’s Uma Reddy Elected to National Academy of Medicine
Uma M. Reddy, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, is among a select group of leaders in medicine and health elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2024. Read more.

How to Make Good Decisions
Weighing choices, especially in today’s flood of news, social media, ads, and opinions, can lead to decision fatigue. Columbia psychiatrist Kelli Harding shares insights into what drives indecision and how to make choices more effectively. Read more.

CUIMC Rallies on Capitol Hill for Research Funding
Members of the CUIMC community joined hundreds of advocates from across the nation at the Rally for Medical Research on Sept. 19. Read more.

Events

Grants

Mailman School of Public Health

  • Ying Wei, Iuliana Ionita-Laza, and Molei Liu, Biostatistics
    $3,638,845 over five years from the National Institute on Aging for "Statistical Framework for Unraveling Age-Dependent Genetic Landscape of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias: Harnessing Large-Scale EHR and DNA-Biobank Integration."

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

  • Benjamin Izar, Medicine
    $900,000 over three years from the Melanoma Research Alliance for "Dissecting neuronal-like cell states in melanoma brain metastasis."
  • Hiroshi Nakagawa, HICCC
    $1,830,625 over five years from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for "Aldh2 and epithelial homeostasis and pathobiology."
  • Konstantin Petrukhin, Ophthalmology
    $1,532,213 over two years from the National Eye Institute for "Advancing the small molecule drug candidate with dual specificity as a therapy for dry AMD."
  • Pamela Scorza, Psychiatry
    $3,059,111 over five years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for "A prospective test of biological embedding within a randomized trial of the Nurse Family Partnership intervention: DNA methylome change over infancy and relevance for child development."
  • Melissa Stockwell, Pediatrics
    $3,125,209 over four years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for "Text4Vax: Understanding the Effectiveness and Implementation of Text Message Reminders for Pediatric COVID-19 and Influenza Vaccines."
  • June Wu, Surgery
    $3,419,608 over four years from the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command for "Propranolol Treatment for High-Output Postoperative Chylothorax: Mechanisms and Insights."

Honors

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

Social Media Snapshot

Jatin M. Vyas, MD, PhD (@jmvyasmdphd)

So excited to join @ColumbiaMed! I have focused my career on supporting the next generation in academic med. The Vagelos Institute for Biomedical Research Education will leverage strengths of @Columbia to build the best environment for physician-scientists from UME to faculty!

Columbia Medicine (@ColumbiaMed)

We’re excited to welcome Dr. Jay Vyas, as our new Assoc. Dean for Academic Innovation & Director of Physician-Scientist Programs at the Vagelos Institute for Basic Biomedical Science. He'll also join the Division of Infectious Diseases in @CUIMCDeptofMed.

In the News Highlights

  • The School for First Ladies is Now in Session
    Oct 12, 2024
    The New York Times
    The group holds a gathering in New York every year during the United Nations General Assembly; since 2023, it also has offered a four-day course, called the Global First Ladies Academy, in July at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. “It felt like graduate school,” Rossana Briceño, the first lady of Belize, said of the Columbia course, which she attended this summer. “We weren’t getting exams, but there was so much to process. It was intense.”
  • California's New Class for Teens and Tweens: Periods, Cramps, and Tampons
    Oct 16, 2024
    USA TODAY
    Dr. Holli Jakalow, an OB-GYN and assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, said the young patients who visit her office in New York City are often uneducated about menstrual health before she sees them. These patients are as young as 12 but they include older teenagers. Jakalow said she is usually the first person after parents to teach them about certain body parts, menstrual cycles, hormones, and reproductive and sexual health. She thinks it would help if school systems taught kids about periods and menstrual health.
  • Beloved Brooklyn Pizzeria Saves Dying Customer by Finding Him a Kidney Donor: ‘I Don’t Know How I Got To Be So Lucky’
    Oct 15, 2024
    New York Post
    “I just started crying. I still don’t even know what that emotion was – it was somewhere between relief and excitement,” [restaurant patron and kidney donor Rusty Rastello] said, holding back tears [after surgery]. “We had become friends at this point and it was an immense amount of gratitude that we both came through it. When I saw him — light had come to his eyes, color to his face. It was remarkable how quickly he recovered.”
    The kidney transplantation described in this article was led by Sumit Mohan, professor of medicine in the Division of Nephrology at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.