CUIMC Update - August 20, 2025

August 20, 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

Welcoming New Students
At the annual White Coat and Pinning ceremonies, more than 400 new students marked the start of their medical, nursing, and dental educations and affirmed their commitment to humanistic patient care.

ECMO Program Receives Award of Excellence
The Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) program at Columbia University Irving Medical Center/NewYork-Presbyterian and Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital has been awarded a Platinum Level Award of Excellence from the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO).

Legionnaires’ Disease: What You Need to Know
Daniel Griffin, an infectious disease specialist at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, explains the symptoms of Legionnaires’ disease, whether it’s contagious, and how to reduce your risk.

Columbia Nursing Students Go Global, Capturing Health in Motion
Forty-one School of Nursing students traveled abroad this spring as part of the Global Student Clinical Program organized by the Office of Global Initiatives, Global Health Division. The students gained hands-on experience in health care delivery, explored the effects of climate change on population health, and shared lessons learned.

Chef Rocco DiSpirito Cooks for Columbia Pre-College Students
Celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito visited CUIMC in support of a pre-college program, Columbia University Health Science Exploration and Research, that introduces local NYC high school students to a wide range of health care professions.

Deadline to Order: BioRender
The deadline to order discounted BioRender Premium licenses for your lab is Aug. 29. All Columbia faculty, staff, and students can try Biorender's full suite of features until Sept. 30 for free, with the discounted group subscription beginning Oct. 1. For more info and an FAQ, visit the CUIT Research Computing Services site.

Funding Opportunity: 50K Awards for Innovative Perinatal Research or Intervention
The Center for the Transition to Parenthood is awarding $50,000 each to two organizations/individuals advancing science or intervention oriented to the public health mission of transforming the perinatal care ecosystem. Apply here by September 15.

Events

Grants

Mailman School of Public Health

  • Lynn Freedman, Population and Family Health
    $354,356 over five years for a subaward from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for “State social policy interventions for maternal health.” 
  • Tian Gu, Biostatistics
    $2,140,772 over four years from the National Cancer Institute for “Enhanced Cancer Risk Predictions in Underrepresented Populations through Robust Multi-Source Data Integration.” 
  • Kathrin Schilling, Environmental Health Sciences
    $425,489 over two years from the Gates (Bill and Melinda) Foundation for “Understand Impact of Metals and PFAS in Menstrual Health Products.”  

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

  • Carla Concepcion-Crisol, Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics
    $2,778,864 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for “Targeting SMARCA2 in SMARCA4-deficient lung cancers in vivo.” 
  • Wassim Elyaman, Neurology
    $900,000 over five years for a subaward from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for “CD4 and CD8 T cell epitopes recognized in autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases.” 
  • May Hua, Anesthesiology
    $650,186 over five years for a subaward from the National Institute on Aging for “Improving needs among older adults: the ICUconnect 2 primary palliative care RCT.” 
  • Shawn Liu, Physiology
    $476,241 over three years from the Rett Syndrome Research Trust for “Non-viral delivery of epigenome editing therapy for Rett Syndrome.” 

Honors

School of Nursing

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

Social Media Snapshot

Instagram

 

In the News Highlights

  • Nailing nutrition and routine as kids head back to school
    Aug 9, 2025
    ABC News (video)
    Marie-Pierre St. Onge, a professor of nutritional medicine at Columbia University, shares tips and tricks to boost nutrition and encourage healthy habits as kids head back to school.  
  • U.S. Drinking Drops to New Low, Poll Finds
    Aug 13, 2025 
    The New York Times
    Polls aren’t bulletproof — self-reporting isn’t always reliable, and people often underreport substance use — but the findings generally align with other data showing declining levels of alcohol use over the years, especially among young people, said Katherine Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University. Still, the Gallup poll and other indicators of declining drinking are “certainly a welcome sign for those of us in this area who have been trying to shift the messaging around alcohol use for a long time,” Dr. Keyes said. “It does seem now like it’s taking hold,” she added. 
  • mRNA Drugs Could Protect Against Almost Any Kind of Viral Infection
    Aug 13, 2025
    New Scientist (UK)
    Just one weekly puff from an asthma-like inhaler might one day protect you from the viral infections that make winters miserable – and could even save your life in the event of another pandemic. That is the tantalising prospect raised by promising animal tests of an mRNA treatment that turns on our built-in viral defences. “You can think about this as a universal antiviral,” says Dusan Bogunovic at Columbia University in New York. Realising the full promise of this approach will require further development of the mRNA technology used in vaccines – but last week the US slashed funding for mRNA vaccine development. “I would be surprised if it didn’t have knock-on effects on efforts like this,” says Bogunovic.