CUIMC Update - February 26, 2025
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
VP&S Open Forum, Monday, March 3 at 4 p.m.
All VP&S faculty, staff, and students are invited to attend the next VP&S Open Forum on Monday, March 3, at 4 p.m. VP&S leadership will discuss the current policy environment and potential impacts on VP&S. A brief Q&A session will follow the presentations.
Columbia Welcomes First Cohort of DDS/PhD Candidates
Columbia University's College of Dental Medicine and School of Engineering recently welcomed the first students in the schools’ DDS/PhD dual degree program, which addresses the growing need for dentists with expertise in translational research.
Data Science Summit Spotlights Rapid Advances in Research Methods
The Data Science in Public Health Summit brought together faculty leaders and researchers across Columbia University and beyond to discuss the use of data science in climate research and pandemic preparedness, and the role of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT in public health and society.
Department of Medicine Celebrates Black History Month
The Department of Medicine celebrated Black History Month on Feb. 13 with food, music, and a talk by William Turner on the contributions, challenges, and triumphs of African American physicians in the United States and at Columbia University.
How Can Humidifiers Help Your Health?
Room humidifiers have become increasingly popular during the winter season. Columbia primary care physician Arthi Reddy explains how humidifiers can help with a range of health issues and ways to use them safely.
Events
- Time for a Heart to Heart: Steps You Can Take to Prevent Heart Disease
Feb. 27, noon
VP&S Building, 630 W. 168 St., Amphitheater 1 or via Zoom - Webinar: "Early Childhood and Media: Guiding Healthy Screen Habits"
Feb. 27, 6 p.m.
Online - Person Place Thing on NPR with Randy Cohen featuring Robert Klitzman
Feb. 27, 6:30 p.m.
Faculty House, 64 Morningside Drive, Garden Room 2 - VP&S Open Forum
March 3, 4 p.m.
Black Building, 650 W. 168 St., Alumni Auditorium and via Zoom - Columbia AI Summit
March 4, all day
Multiple locations - The Future is Fireproof: Putting Out Fires In the American Past
March 4, 11:45 a.m.
Allan Rosenfield Building, 722 W. 168 St., Room 532AB - March Narrative Medicine Rounds with Dinaw Mengestu
March 5, 6 p.m.
Online - John Dunnington, MD, Lectureship: "AI in Clinical Practice: Opportunities and Challenges" by Dr. SriniVas Sadda
March 6, 5 p.m.
Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center, 173 Fort Washington Ave., Myrna L. Daniels Auditorium - Bioethics in Film: From Screen to Seminar | Hereditary (2018)
March 6, 6:30 p.m.
Vagelos Education Center, 104 Haven Ave., Room 902 and via Zoom - Ethical Approaches to Migrant Health: A Membership Based Account
March 11, noon
Vagelos Education Center, 104 Haven Ave., Room 201 - The 50th Anniversary of the Declassification of Homosexuality As a Disease: Where Are We Today?
March 13, 6:15 p.m.
Online - The Dean’s Distinguished Lecture Series in the Clinical Sciences: “Unraveling the Mechanisms of Fight or Flight: How the Heart Responds to Adrenergic Signals” with Steven O. Marx, MD
March 27, 4:30 p.m.
Black Building, 650 W. 168 St., Alumni Auditorium - Application Deadline: Lasker Essay Contest
March 31, 2 p.m.
Online - Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month Faculty and Staff Screening Week
March 31 to April 4
ColumbiaDoctors, 51 W. 51 St., Suite #200
Grants
Mailman School of Public Health
- Christian Dye, Environmental Health Sciences
$262,234 over two years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for "The epigenetic basis of socioeconomic determinants of cardiometabolic health in American Indians."
Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
- Katharine Brewster, Psychiatry
$540,000 over five years from the New York State Office of Mental Health for "Psychiatric Residency Training at Greater Binghamton Health Center and Rockland Psychiatric Center." - Danny Florez Paz, Neurology
$499,932 over three years from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research for "Developmental mechanisms in the formation and function of sensory-motor circuits responsible for suckling and mastication." - Guillermo Horga and Gary Escola, Psychiatry
$4,096,542 over five years from the National Institute of Mental Health for "Translational studies in humans and mice to test a circuit-level computational model of auditory hallucinations." - Ian Kronish and Nathalie Moise, Medicine
$5,491,662 over five years from the National Institute on Aging for "The Columbia Roybal Center for Fearless Behavior Change - renewal." - Christopher Petit, Pediatrics
$428,804 over four years for a subaward from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for "Evaluating the relationship between skin color and pulse oximeter accuracy in children." - Jianlong Wang, Medicine
$452,375 over two years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for "Decoding NSUN2-mediated translational control of pluripotent stem cells."
Honors
Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
- David D. Ho, Microbiology & Immunology
Will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Columbia University Asian Faculty Association. - Luis Lopez, Psychiatry
Recevied a 2024 Leadership Award from the Association for Community Living Agencies in Mental Health. - Columbia University has been named a Focused Ultrasound Center of Excellence by the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, recognizing its leadership in research and innovation. Elisa Konofagou, Radiology, leads the center at Columbia.
Social Media Snapshot
In the News Highlights
What to Know About Measles
Feb 19, 2025
CNN Online
“About 1 in 5 unvaccinated people in the US with measles will be hospitalized, and as many as 1 in 20 children with measles will get pneumonia, which is the most common cause of death from measles in young children,” Dr. Melissa Stockwell, a professor of pediatrics at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, said in an email.
Young Women's Locale Plays Role In Breast Cancer Risk
Feb 26, 2025
HealthDay
The breast cancer risk associated with a young woman’s locale is comparable to that from other known factors, such as genetics, researchers reported in a new study published recently in the journal Cancer Causes & Control.
“Breast cancer incidence is increasing in U.S. women under 40, but until now, it was unknown if incidence trends varied by U.S. geographic region,” lead researcher Rebecca Kehm, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said in a news release.
Opinion: The Price We Pay Betting on Sports
Feb 8, 2025
The New York Times
Consider a young man from my therapy practice, a former college athlete, who isn’t bankrupt or in crisis but feels stuck in a cycle of unhealthy online sports betting. He repeatedly deletes the betting app from his phone, only to reinstall it days later at the prompting of a well-timed email, a group bet with friends or simply the ads plastered across every sports arena.
Carl Erik Fisher, author of this Opinion piece, is an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.