CUIMC Celebrates 2018-19, Issue 1

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 e-mail to the Celebrates editor.

Looking for an older issue? The CUIMC Celebrates archive can be accessed at http://ps.columbia.edu/celebrates/.

Research Grants / Awards & Honors / Philanthropic Gifts / CUIMC in the News

RESEARCH GRANTS

$250,000 and above

VAGELOS COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS & SURGEONS

Elizabeth Bradshaw, PhD, Neurology, will receive $2,747,409 over five years from the National Institute on Aging for “Convergence of Myeloid Susceptibility Protein Function in Alzheimer’s Disease.”

David J. Brenner, PhD, Center for Radiological Research, will receive $1,999,985 over one year from the Office of the NIH Director for “6 MeV/amu Ion Linac for Deep-Penetration Microbeam and Millimeter-Beam Charged-Particle Irradiations in Small Animals and Biological Tissues.”

Nigel Bunnett, PhD, Surgery, will receive $1,798,185 over five years from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research for “Protease/PAR2/TRPV4 Axis and Oral Cancer Pain.”

Lisa Dixon, MD, Psychiatry, will receive $1,330,686 over four years from the National Institute of Mental Health for “Optimizing and Personalizing Interventions for Schizophrenia Across the Lifespan (OPAL).”

Anke A. Ehrhardt, PhD, Psychiatry, will receive $300,000 over two years from the Ford Foundation for “The Study of LGBT Health.”

Sankar Ghosh, PhD, Microbiology & Immunology, will receive $2,000,000 over five years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for “Understanding the Importance of IkB-b as a Selective Co-activator of NF-kB Signaling.”

David Goldstein, PhD, Ali Gharavi, MD, and George Hripcsak, MD, Institute for Genomic Medicine, will receive $9,000,000 over five years from the Office of the NIH Director for “New York City Consortium for Precision Medicine.”

Justin S. Golub, MD, Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, will receive $825,934 over five years from the National Institute on Aging for “Mechanisms Linking Hearing Loss and Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias.”

Frances R. Levin, MD, Psychiatry, will receive $2,189,086 over five years from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for “Research Fellowship in Substance Abuse Disorder” in a competitive renewal.

Stephanie Lovinsky-Desir, MD, Pediatrics, will receive $691,944 over four years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for “Physical Activity and Dose of Air Pollution in Pediatric Urban Asthma: Impact of Minute Ventilation.”

Filippo Mancia, PhD, Physiology & Cellular Biophysics, will receive $399,352 over three years from the Simons Foundation for “Simons Society for Junior Fellows.”

Siddhartha Mukherjee, MD, DPhil, Medicine, will receive $5,000,000 over three years from Celgene for “Targeting Splicing Factor Mutations in Myelodysplastic Syndromes in Cancer.”

Liza Pon, PhD, Pathology & Cell Biology, will receive $1,387,682 over three years from the National Institute on Aging for “The Role of Actin in Cellular Aging.”

Lawrence H. Schwartz, MD, and Binsheng Zhao, DSc, Radiology, will receive $3,093,235 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for “Integrating Radiomics Into S0819 and Lung-MAP, Biomarker-Driven Clinical Trials for Lung Cancer.” Dr. Schwartz also will receive $1,345,200 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for “Quantitative Imaging Tools to Derive DW-MRI Oncological Biomarkers.”

Steven J. Shea, MD, Medicine, will receive $646,875 over two years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for “Retail Outlet Health Kiosk Hypertension Trial.”

Ari Shechter, PhD, Medicine, will receive $3,422,052 over five years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for “Poor Sleep, Sedentary Behavior, and Secondary Cardiovascular Risk in Stroke and TIA Patients.”

Daichi Shimbo, MD, Medicine, will receive $2,107,290 over four years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for “Psychological Stress, and Circadian Patterns of Sodium Excretion and Blood Pressure.”

Mimi Shirasu-Hiza, PhD, Genetics & Development, will receive $1,999,049 over five years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences for “Circadian Regulation of Physiological Functions.”

Markus Siegelin, MD, Pathology & Cell Biology, will receive $1,771,146 over five years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for “Targeting Mutant IDH1 for a Novel Synthetic Lethal Interaction in Malignant Gliomas.”

Ronald H. Silverman, PhD, Ophthalmology, will receive $1,811,949 over four years from the National Eye Institute for “Ocular Hemodynamics of Rat Model of Glaucoma.”

Marisa Spann, PhD, Psychiatry, will receive $480,895 over three years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for “Maternal Immune Activation and Fetal-Infant Neurobehavioral Development.”

Rebecca Straus Farber, MD, Neurology, will receive $250,000 over two years from Genentech for “Multiple Sclerosis Clinical Care and Research Fellowship.”

Lorraine Symington, PhD, Microbiology & Immunology, will receive $3,079,123 over five years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences for “Mechanism and Regulation of DNA Double-Strand Break Repair.”

Gülgün Tezel, MD, Ophthalmology, will receive $1,600,000 over four years from the National Eye Institute for “Regulation of Glia-Driven Neuroinflammation in Glaucoma.”

Stephen Tsang, MD, PhD, Ophthalmology, will receive $1,811,048 over five years from the National Eye Institute for “Defining Barriers to Gene Therapy” in a competitive renewal and $1,553,440 over one year from Abeona Therapeutics for “Chromosome-Specific ChopStick Therapy for Best Vitelliform Macular Dystrophy & ChopStick Therapy for Autosomal Dominant Retinitis Pigmentosa (adRP).”

Michael Yin, MD, Medicine, will receive $467,700 over one year from the National Institute of Mental Health for “HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies.”

MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Bereket Alemayehu, MD, ICAP, will receive $25,000,000 over five years from the U.S. Agency for International Development for “Malaria Diagnosis and Treatment Activity.”

Andrea Baccarelli, MD, PhD, Environmental Health Sciences, will receive $7,966,550 over five years from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for “Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan” in a competitive renewal; $2,678,327 over five years from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for “Effects of Flame Retardants on Brain Function and Attentional Deficits in School-Age Children – Brain Imaging, Neurobehavioral, and Gut Microbiome Studies in a Longitudinal Birth Cohort”; and $314,194 over five years from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for “The Effects of Environmental Exposures on Semen Quality and the Sperm Epigenome.”

Wafaa M. El-Sadr, MD, ICAP, will receive $5,002,992 over three years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for “HPTN 084: A Phase 3 Double-Blind Safety and Efficacy Study of Long-Acting Injectable Cabotegravir Compared to Daily Oral TDF/FTC for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis in HIV-Uninfected Women.”

Julie Herbstman, PhD, Environmental Health Sciences, will receive $304,918 over one year from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for “Prenatal Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals and Social/Cognitive Risk in Mothers and Infants: Potential Biologic Pathways.”

Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, ScD, Environmental Health Sciences, will receive $405,228 over two years from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for “Air Pollution Exposure and Risk of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).”

W. Ian Lipkin, MD, Center for Infection & Immunity, will receive $1,000,000 over one year from the Beroni Group for “Beroni SRA# 51897.”

Marita Murrman, EdD, Sociomedical Sciences, will receive $3,069,880 over four years from the Health Resources and Services Administration for “Public Health Training Centers - Affordable Care Act (ACA)” in a competitive renewal.

Martina Pavlicova, PhD, Biostatistics, will receive $416,445 over five years from the National Institute of Mental Health for “HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies” in a competitive renewal.

Mary Beth Terry, PhD, Epidemiology, will receive $9,998,122 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for “Breast Cancer Family Registry Cohort” in a competitive renewal.

Yuanjia Wang, PhD, Biostatistics, will receive $528,000 over four years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences for “Efficient Statistical Learning Methods for Personalized Medicine Using Large-Scale Biomedical Data.”

SCHOOL OF NURSING

Patricia Stone, PhD, Scholarship & Research, will receive $1,503,105 over five years from the National Institute of Nursing Research for “Comparative and Cost-Effectiveness Research Training for Nurse Scientists” in a competitive renewal.

AWARDS & HONORS

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IRVING MEDICAL CENTER

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. Six CUIMC faculty are on teams that received 2018 RISE awards.

  • Clarissa Waites, PhD, Pathology & Cell Biology, “Entropic Forces and SNARE Protein Ubiquitination in Synaptic Transmission and Plasticity”
  • Jeffrey Shaman, PhD, Environmental Health Sciences, and Simon Anthony, DPhil, Epidemiology, “Evolution in the Arctic: Genomic Reconstruction of Microbial, Plant, and Animal Communities During the Holocene”
  • Nathaniel Sawtell, PhD, Neuroscience, “Novel Devices for Uncovering Principles of Active Sensory Processing”
  • Vincent Ferrera, PhD, Neuroscience, and Thomas Vaughan, PhD, Radiology, “An Integrative Approach for Tracing Parallel Visual Pathways in the Non-human Primate Brain”

VAGELOS COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS & SURGEONS

Interdisciplinary Research Initiatives Seed (IRIS) Fund Program

The IRIS program advances interdisciplinary, multi-investigator projects and supports the collection of preliminary data. Two proposals received 2018 IRIS funds:

  • Maxwell Gottesman, PhD, Microbiology & Immunology, “Towards a Molecular Understanding of Transthyretin (TTR) Cardiac Amyloidosis Pathobiology”
  • Gerard Karsenty, MD, PhD, Genetics & Development, “Elucidating the Bone-Muscle Interactions in Altered Zinc Homeostasis in Cancer Cachexia”

Paul Marks Scholars Program

The Paul Marks Scholars Program supports the recruitment of outstanding early career scientists who have distinguished themselves as exceptionally promising in their field. Three faculty members were named 2018 scholars:

  • Christine Chio, PhD, Genetics & Development
  • Vincenzo Gennarino, PhD, Genetics & Development
  • Manu Johny, PhD, Physiology & Cellular Biophysics

Other Honors

Brooke Aggarwal, EdD, Medicine, has been appointed to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association National Research Committee.

David Aggen, MD, PhD, Daniel O’Neil, MD, Shawn Sarkaria, MD, Ruth White, MD, PhD, and Jessica Yang, MD, Medicine, received 2018 Young Investigator Awards from the Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO.

Amelia Averitt, PhD candidate, won best poster for her project, “Noisy-Or Risk Allocation for Casual Inference,” at the National Library of Medicine Informatics Training Conference.

Edward J. Ciaccio, PhD, Medicine, will deliver an invited talk titled “The VT Isthmus During Sinus Rhythm” at the third annual Signal Summit Course in September.

Mark Hardy, MD, Surgery, received the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award from the European Society of Surgical Research.

Jane S. Kang, MD, Medicine, received a 2019 Clinician Scholar Educator Award from the Rheumatology Research Foundation.

Tuuli Lappalainen, PhD, Systems Biology, received the 2018 Leena Peltonen Prize for Excellence in Human Genetics from the European Society of Human Genetics.

Lawrence G. Lenke, MD, J. Alex Sielatycki, MD, Eduardo Beauchamp, MD, and Meghan Cerpa, Orthopedic Surgery, won a Thomas Whitecloud Award, which recognizes the best basic and clinical science papers at the International Meeting on Advanced Spine Techniques, for “The Relative Curve Correction Is More Important Than UIV Selection for Shoulder Balance in Lenke Type 1 and 2 AIS.”

Lori Mosca, MD, PhD, Medicine, received the 2018 Epidemiology and Prevention Mentoring Award from the American Heart Association’s Council on Epidemiology and Prevention.

Stephen Novak, CUIMC Library, received a Lisabeth M. Holloway Award at the annual meeting of Archivists and Librarians in the History of the Health Sciences (ALHHS) in recognition of leadership and service to ALHHS and the profession.

Molly Przeworski, PhD, Systems Biology, received a Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award for exceptional teaching.

Melvin P. Rosenwasser, MD, Orthopedic Surgery, was honored with the 22nd annual Edward A. Nalebuff Lectureship at New England Baptist Hospital in June.

Gary Schwartz, MD, Medicine, was named a fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Megan Sykes, MD, Medicine, received the 2018 Medawar Prize, the most prestigious prize in the field of transplantation, from The Transplantation Society.

Xiaobo Wang, PhD, Medicine, was named the 2018 Liver Scholar by the American Liver Foundation.

Members of the 250th Anniversary Steering Committee and Office of Development received a gold award in the print and digital publishing category of the GIA Awards for Excellence Competition for the VP&S 250th Anniversary Scholarship Challenge Viewbook from the Association of American Medical Colleges Group on Institutional Advancement.

MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Wafaa El-Sadr, MD, University Professor, was named one of “nine immigrants who helped make America great” by CNN. Dr. El-Sadr also was profiled in the series “Women of ID [Infectious Diseases]” by the Infectious Diseases Society of America Foundation.

Meghan M. FitzGerald, DrPH, Health Policy & Management, was named to the board of directors of the health care services company Tenet Healthcare Corporation.

Miriam Laugesen, PhD, Health Policy & Management, was named to the executive committee of the AcademyHealth education council for a three-year term.

Lisa Rosen-Metsch, PhD, Sociomedical Sciences, was selected as the Mentor of the Year for 2018 by the Mailman School junior faculty of the Department of Sociomedical Sciences.

Madeleine Thomson, PhD, Environmental Health Sciences, is a co-editor of PLOS Medicine’s upcoming special issue on climate change and health.

Y. Claire Wang, MD, Health Policy & Management, was accepted into the National Academy of Medicine’s 2018-19 Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine Program.

COLLEGE OF DENTAL MEDICINE

Arushi Atluri, DDS candidate, was awarded a 2018 Margaret E. Mahoney Fellowship in Health Policy by the New York Academy of Medicine for “Assessing the Healthcare Changes Underway in the U.S. and Their Implications for the Careers of Today’s Dental Students.”

Joel M. Friedman, DDS, Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, was elected chair of the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery District 1 Caucus.

Scott Peters, DDS, Oral Pathology, was awarded the 2018 Shafer Award from the American Academy of Oral & Maxillofacial Pathology for achieving the highest score on the American Academy of Oral & Maxillofacial Pathology Fellowship exam.

SCHOOL OF NURSING 

Cilgy Abraham, PhD candidate, was awarded a 2018 Margaret E. Mahoney Fellowship in Health Policy by the New York Academy of Medicine for “Primary Care Provider Burnout and Patient Care for Non-English-speaking Minorities in New York.”

Suzanne Bakken, PhD, Scholarship & Research, was appointed editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. Dr. Bakken is the first non-MD to serve as editor of the journal.

Karen Desjardins, DNP, Academics, received the Adam Solomon Award from the Tanenbaum Center—a nonprofit focused on combating religious prejudice—for exemplifying leadership, strategic vision, and creativity.

Kasey Jackman, PhD, Scholarship & Research, received the Dissertation Excellence Award from the Columbia University School of Nursing.

Ana Kelly, PhD, Academics, received a Fulbright award to Malawi.

Jacqueline Merrill, PhD, Scholarship & Research, was invited to be a member of the Health Services Research Information Advisory Committee at AcademyHealth for a four-year term.

Allison Norful, PhD, Scholarship & Research, received a 2018 Heilbrunn Nurse Scholar Award from The Rockefeller University Heilbrunn Family Center for Research Nursing. Norful also received a 2018 postdoctoral scholarship from the AcademyHealth Interdisciplinary Research Group on Nursing Issues.

Jingjing Shang, PhD, and Patricia Stone, PhD, Scholarship & Research, received the Home Health Agencies in the Changing Policy Environment Award from the Alliance for Home Health Quality and Innovation.

PHILANTHROPIC GIFTS

VAGELOS COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS & SURGEONS

A donor made a $2,000,000 commitment to the Department of Ophthalmology to advance clinical research toward discovering the most advanced medical and surgical treatments for glaucoma.

A donor made a bequest of $1,600,000 to provide scholarship support to the Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons.

A donor made a commitment of $1,500,000 to establish an assistant/associate professorship of cardiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

A donor made a $1,000,000 commitment to the Division of Mental Health Services & Policy Research within the Department of Psychiatry.

A bequest of $562,536 was realized to provide scholarship support to the Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons.

A company made a $450,000 pledge to the Center for Lymphoid Malignancies at Columbia University Irving Medical Center to advance research in lymphoid malignancies.

A donor made a gift of $250,000 to advance research on lymphoma and other hematological cancers at the Center for Lymphoid Malignancies.

A donor made a $225,000 contribution to support the Chairman’s Frontier Fund in the Department of Psychiatry.

A donor made a $200,000 gift to the center for lymphoid malignancies at Columbia University Irving Medical Center to advance research in lymphoid malignancies.

A bequest of $156,113 was realized to provide scholarship support to the Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons.

An organization made a $151,600 commitment to advance research and clinical care in non-verbal learning disabilities in the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

A donor made a $150,000 contribution to the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.

A donor made a gift of $150,000 to support the Department of Ophthalmology’s Retina Research Fund.

A corporation made a $150,000 contribution to the Department of Surgery to advance research in plastic, craniofacial, and reconstructive surgery.

A donor made a $150,000 commitment to the Columbia University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CUCARD) Legacy Fund within the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

A donor made a gift of $100,154 to support research in gynecological oncology in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

A family foundation made a $100,000 gift to the Department of Ophthalmology to support a fellow specializing in ocular oncology.

A donor made a $100,000 gift to the Department of Neurology to support research in the Division of Movement Disorders.

A family foundation made a $100,000 contribution to advance research and care in the Department of Pediatrics.

A family made a $100,000 contribution to support clinical care at the Department of Psychiatry’s Day Treatment Program.

A family made a $100,000 gift to advance research in the Division of Cardiology.

MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

A donor made a pledge of $1,000,000 toward research on menstrual hygiene management, development of puberty-related educational content for adolescent girls, and faculty support in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences.

A family foundation gave $200,000 to the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health.

A family foundation made a gift of $101,136 to fund microbiome/chronic fatigue syndrome research in the Center for Infection & Immunity.

COLLEGE OF DENTAL MEDICINE

A donor made a $500,000 commitment to establish a scholarship fund in prosthodontics at the College of Dental Medicine.

A donor made a $100,000 pledge to support an operatory suite at the Center for Precision Dental Medicine.

CUIMC IN THE NEWS

Trapped Thai Boys Being Closely Watched for Health Problems

Associated Press | July 11, 2018

The boys were malnourished and weak, and doctors are probably worried that they could be susceptible to germs spread by family members or other visitors, said Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University infectious diseases expert.… Lipkin said more likely risks are tetanus bacteria that could infect a wound, diarrhea-causing bacteria that could have contaminated the cave waters, and inhalable fungal spores that could cause breathing problems—including pneumonia.

Sleep Habits: Even Mild Sleep Problems Can Raise Blood Pressure

Newsweek | June 27, 2018

A study from Columbia University Irving Medical Center shows that women who have mild sleep problems—including those who slept for seven to nine hours a night—are significantly more likely to have elevated blood pressure, according to the findings published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. … “That’s concerning, since studies have shown that sleep deprivation and milder sleep problems may have a disproportionate effect on cardiovascular health in women,” said Brooke Aggarwal in a statement. Aggarwal is a behavioral scientist in the Department of Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and the lead author of the study.

The Medical/Dental Clinic

Repertoire Magazine | June 18, 2018

“The College of Dental Medicine was founded 100 years ago with the disruptive idea that dentistry should be taught and practiced within the context of the whole body,” Christian S. Stohler, DMD, DrMedDent, dean of the College of Dental Medicine and senior vice president for Columbia University Irving Medical Center, said at the time of the center’s opening. “The Center for Precision Dental Medicine gives us the capacity to realize this founding vision in the information age.”

Why Does Sweetness Taste So Good?

The Atlantic | May 30, 2018

For years now, Charles Zuker and his lab at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute have been following that tracery, publishing new papers as the trail leads them through each successive brain structure involved in perception.

Nurse Practitioner Group Celebrates First Anniversary With 101-Year-Old Patient

NY1 | May 27, 2018

The ColumbiaDoctors Nurse Practitioner Group's House Calls Practice celebrated its first anniversary yesterday by making a house call to its patient Iris Boteler who turned 101 years old.

Visit http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/headlines/ to see more top-tier media headlines or subscribe to the CUIMC Weekly Media Report to receive a broader compilation of media appearances via email each week.

Past issues of CUIMC CELEBRATES: http://ps.columbia.edu/celebrates/

Tags

awards, grants, honors