CUIMC Update - June 18, 2025

June 18, 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

Want to Sleep Better Tonight? Try Eating More Fruits and Veggies
A study led by researchers at Columbia University and the University of Chicago found that eating more fruits and vegetables during the day was associated with sleeping more soundly later that night.

Making Progress Toward Improved Maternal Health
Mailman School of Public Health alum and Board of Advisors member Perri Peltz recently led a discussion on the maternal health crisis in the United States and how midwives can contribute to the solution, timed for the release of her new documentary "She Runs the World."

Taking the Initiative
Columbia Nursing's Quality Improvement Practicum, which introduces students to the theory and practice of strategic hospital-based quality improvement initiatives, is helping students become better nurses—and nursing leaders.

How Understanding Grief Can Help Us Cope
Grief can overwhelm the body and mind with sorrow, shock, and disbelief. Erin Engle, clinical director of Columbia University Psychiatry Specialty Services at Columbia’s Neurological Institute, explains how grief can impact the body and ways to work through it.

Events

Grants

Mailman School of Public Health

  • Thoại Ngô, Population and Family Health
    $318,578 over one year for a subaward from the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation for "Core Support for Advancing Gender Equity and Empowerment: Dr. Thoai D. Ngo."

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

  • David Ho, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center
    $494,325 over one year for a subaward from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for "Antigenic characterization of SARS-CoV-2 variants and point mutants, and implications for therapeutics and vaccines."
  • Jennifer Manly, Sergievsky Center
    $293,240 over one year for a subaward from the National Institute on Aging for "Educational and Early Life Predictors of Mild Cognitive Impairment: New Evidence about Mediators and Moderators from High School and Beyond."
  • Vivek Moitra, Anesthesiology
    $1,534,617 over one year for a subaward from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute for "The SCOPE Trial: Sleep, Cognition, and Pain bundle vs. ERAS-cardiac for postoperative delirium."
  • Elvira Parravicini, Pediatrics
    $500,000 over one year from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation for "Neonatal Comfort Care Program (NCCP)."
  • Samuel Sternberg, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics
    $673,861 over two years for a subaward from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation for "Delivery and Integration of Corrective CFTR Transgenes in Human CF Airway Epithelium."

Honors

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

Social Media Snapshot

Columbia Medicine | Research means more powerful cancer treatments. Pancreatic cancer is often fatal. But Columbia’s new “triple-combination” therapy shrank... | Instagram

In the News Highlights

  • Doctors Report the First Pregnancy Using a New AI Procedure
    June 10, 2025
    TIME
    Doctors at Columbia University Fertility Center have reported what they are calling the first pregnancy using a new AI system, in a couple that had been trying to start a family for nearly two decades. The pregnancy was possible due to an advance developed by the Columbia team, led by Dr. Zev Williams, director of the center, to address azoospermia, or a lack of detectable sperm in the ejaculate.
    That’s where AI comes in. Williams and his team spent five years developing a system that combined an AI algorithm for detecting sperm with a fluidic chip that passed the semen sample through a tiny tubule on a plastic chip. If the AI picked up sperm, that tiny portion of semen would be directed to a separate tubule and collected. The few sperm isolated in this way could then be stored, frozen, or used to fertilize an egg.
  • The Chilling Discovery That Nerve Cells Help Cancers Grow and Spread
    Jun 9, 2025
    New Scientist (UK)
    Timothy Wang at Columbia University in New York City and his colleagues managed to slow tumour growth in mice by blocking nerve signals from reaching stomach tumours – either by using Botox or by cutting the nerves. In combination with chemotherapy, this increased the animals’ chances of surviving for more than a month by more than 20 per cent compared with mice that had only chemotherapy.
  • All Things Considered: American Science and Technology May Suffer if U.S. Revokes Visas for Chinese Students
    Jun 9, 2025
    NPR (audio)
    David Ho is a celebrated virologist whose many accolades include the Presidential Citizens Medal and Time Magazine's Man of the Year for his work on HIV AIDS. Now he's studying COVID. And his research, Ho says, is groundbreaking because he can hire the most talented students from all over the world, including from China.
    David Ho is the Clyde '56 and Helen Wu Professor of Medicine and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology and the director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.