CUIMC Update - January 8, 2025

January 8, 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

Is Your Body Ready to Hit the Gym?
Your new year's resolution might involve getting in shape, but if you aren't a regular gym visitor, you should follow the steps outlined by Columbia primary care doctor Adam Makkawi to determine if you’re ready.

CUIMC University Senate Meeting, Jan. 13 at 5 p.m.
All students, faculty, and staff at the medical center are invited to attend a meeting of CUIMC Senators and constituents, which will take place Jan. 13 at 5 p.m. in Alumni Auditorium. Senate Executive Committee Chair Jeanine D'Armiento and Senate representatives will give a presentation and then answer questions. Register and submit questions.

What You Need to Know About the RSV Vaccine
Respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV, is a highly contagious lung infection that can lead to pneumonia and bronchiolitis, especially in young children and older and immunocompromised adults. Columbia family medicine doctor Anita Beecham Robinson explains why the RSV vaccine could prevent severe illness.

In Memoriam: Remembering Our Colleagues
CUIMC extends sympathy to the families and colleagues of community members who died in 2024. 

Events

Grants

Mailman School of Public Health

  • Ilan Cerna-Turoff, Epidemiology
    $252,666 over two years from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for "Spatiotemporal effects and associations between deforestation and alcohol and tobacco use in Indonesia."
  • Darby Jack, Environmental Health Sciences
    $502,410 over three years for a subaward from Wellcome Trust for "Building a climate cohort to monitor health impacts of climate change in Ghana."
  • J. Wickiser, Center for Infection & Immunity
    $1,231,137 over five years from Fogarty International Center for "Training West African Public Health and Clinical Research Professionals to Conduct Pan-Pathogen Surveillance Using Sustainable and Effective Genetic, Molecular, and Serological Approaches (TWA-PPPSA)."

School of Nursing

  • Melissa Beauchemin
    $461,093 over two years from the National Institute of Nursing Research for "Navigating Financial and Health-Related Social Needs in Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Survivors (AYA-NAV): A Digital Intervention Pilot Study."

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

  • Michael Birnbaum, Psychiatry
    $4,182,231 over four years from the National Institute of Mental Health for "Digital Strategies to Advance Help-Seeking in Youth at Clinical High Risk for Developing Psychosis."
  • Angela Christiano, Dermatology
    $1,809,500 over two years from the National Cancer Institute for "Senescence-on-a-chip: Building a microphysiological 3D skin model."
  • Philip De Jager and Hanane Touil, Neurology
    $614,784 over five years from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society for "Career Transition Fellowship (Touil, Hanane)."
  • Lisa Hark and Aakriti Shukla, Ophthalmology
    $1,250,000 over five years from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for "Coordinating Center for SIGHT Studies Evaluating the Effectiveness of Telehealth-Based Programs to Detect Glaucoma Among High-Risk Populations in Community Health Settings."
  • Tal Korem, Systems Biology
    $3,425,813 over five years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for "A large scale investigation of the vaginal ecosystem in preeclampsia."
  • Andreane Lavallee, Pediatrics
    $262,666 over two years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for "Emotional and biobehavioral mechanisms of parent-infant emotional synchrony."
  • Richard Paul Mayeux, Sergievsky Center
    $1,525,349 over one year from the National Institute on Aging for "Epidemiological Integration of Genetic Variants and Metabolomics Profiles in Washington Heights Columbia Aging Project (WHICAP)."
  • Sandra Ryeom, Surgery
    $3,417,390 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for "Targeting FGFR Alterations in Gastroesophageal Cancer."
  • Katherine Xu, Medicine
    $761,700 over five years from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for "Human Genetic Approach for UTI Points to Novel Immune Defense Cells of the Kidney Epithelia."
  • Lori Zeltser, Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center
    $505,388 over one year from the Office of The NIH Director for "Zeiss LSM 900 with Airyscan 2."

Honors

Columbia University Irving Medical Center

  • The Irving Institute and the CUIMC Office of Academic Affairs announced the 2024 Mentors of the Year awardees. Billy A. Caceres, School of Nursing, and Jordan Gabriela Nestor, Medicine, were named Junior Mentors of the Year, and Dani Dumitriu, Pediatrics, and Chunhua Weng, Biomedical Informatics, were named Senior Mentors of the Year.

Mailman School of Public Health

Social Media Snapshot

 

Columbia Medicine (@ColumbiaMed)

New research by @columbiaps has revealed why some people who carry disease-causing genes experience no symptoms. The research is "suggesting that there is more plasticity in our DNA than we thought before,” says study leader Dusan Bogunovic, PhD.

In the News Highlights

  • Opinion: How Virtual Appointments Taught Me to Be a Better Doctor
    Dec 27, 2024
    The New York Times
    I knew that these video visits would be easier for sick patients who didn’t want to leave the house, and further the public health goal of reducing people’s exposure to infectious diseases. But I always thought tech-enabled conveniences would be at the expense of human connection. It turned out I was wrong. Through the screen, I found something unexpected: the chance for technology to offer a different—and sometimes deeper—interaction with patients.
    Helen Ouyang, author of this opinion piece, is an associate professor of emergency medicine at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
  • The Elephantine Memories of Food-Caching Birds
    Dec 29, 2024
    The New Yorker
    The feats of chickadees and other food-caching birds are especially impressive because they are accomplished through cognition, Dmitriy Aronov, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, told me. (Aronov’s lab has discovered “place cells”—neurons that represent specific locations—in the hippocampi of food-caching birds.)
  • Your Body Has 30 Trillion Genomes
    Jan 2, 2025
    The Atlantic
    Over the past decade, genetic sequencing has become dramatically faster, cheaper, and more detailed, which has made sequencing the genomes of different cells in the same person more practical and has led scientists to understand just how much genetic variation exists in each of us.
    Jason Liebowitz, author of this article, is an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Rheumatology at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.