CUIMC Update - May 7, 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

Your Guide to the 2025 CUIMC Graduation Ceremonies
Columbia University Irving Medical Center celebrates all of our students who are graduating this month. Read about the events and speakers at this month's ceremonies.

Medical Honor Societies Recognize Columbia Faculty Members
The Association of American Physicians and the American Society for Clinical Investigation have elected six faculty from VP&S and the Mailman School of Public Health to their membership.

National Nurses Week 2025
School of Nursing Dean Lorraine Frazier shares a message celebrating nurses in honor of National Nurses Week, May 6 through May 12.

Schaefer Awards Gallery Debuts Enhanced Seating Plan
The Schaefer Awards Gallery—adjacent to Alumni Auditorium—recently unveiled an expanded indoor seating plan, offering a welcoming space ideal for casual lunches, quick study sessions, or simply taking a break.

What is “Text Neck?”
Spending hours each day staring at your phone with your neck in an unnatural position can lead to long-term complications. Columbia orthopedic spine surgeon Eduardo C. Beauchamp explains the issues he sees resulting from “text neck” and how to handle them.

Events

• A Great Friendship: The Evolution of the Government-University Science Partnership in the United States
  May 13, noon
  Online
• The Biology of Aging Seminar Series: Mone Zaidi, MD, PhD
  May 14, noon
  Hammer Health Sciences Center, 701 W. 168 St., Room 322
• From Freeze to Evisceration of U.S. Foreign Aid 
  May 15, 10 a.m.
  Online
• 2025 Luminary Employees Recognition: A Panel and Networking Celebration
  May 15, 3:30 p.m.
  School of Nursing, 560 W. 168 St., 7th Floor
• Federated Learning Workshop
  May 16, 10 a.m.
  Vagelos Education Center, 104 Haven Ave., Room 401
• Defining the Future of Public Health Preparedness in NYC
  May 19, 8:30 a.m.
  The Forum at Columbia University, 601 W. 125th St.
• Let's Talk Liver, Ladies! (Women's Health Corner Talk Series)
  May 20, noon
  VP&S Building, 630 W. 168 St., Amphitheater 1
• Health in the Era of Social Media
  May 20, 6 p.m.
  Online
• Precision Ophthalmology 2025: In Our DNA
  June 14, 8 a.m.
  Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center, 173 Fort Washington Ave., Myrna L. Daniels Auditorium
• Center for Innovation in Imaging Biomarkers and Integrated Diagnostics Launch Event
  June 16, 10 a.m.
  School of Nursing, 560 W. 168 St., 7th Floor
• Ethics for Lunch: From Coma to Consciousness: Are We Worried?
  June 17, 1 p.m.
  VP&S Building, 630 W. 168 St., Amphitheater 1 or via Zoom

Grants

Mailman School of Public Health

• Andrea Howard, ICAP
  $1,404,762 over three years from the Elton John AIDS Foundation for "Samarqand Oblast Model for Epidemic Control (SOMEC)."

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

• Mariah DeSerisy, Psychiatry: $1,083,670 over five years from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for "Air Pollution Effects on Child Irritability and Brain Connectivity."
• Teresa Palomero and Raul Rabadan, Institute for Cancer Genetics: $750,000 over three years from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for "Targeting Microenvironment Determinants in Peripheral T-cell Lymphoma."
• Alexander Sobolevsky, Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics: $377,000 over three years from the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization for "Understanding the molecular basis of animal cold thermosensation."

Honors

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

• Tiffany E. Murano, Emergency Medicine
  Named the 2025 Virginia Apgar Academy for Medical Educators Mentor of the Year.
• Jamie Rubin, Medicine
  Profiled in the latest issue of Radiations, the official publication of Sigma Pi Sigma, the national physics and astronomy honor society.
• Adjoa Smalls-Mantey, Psychiatry
  Appointed president of the New York County Psychiatric Society, the largest district branch of the American Psychiatric Association.
• Michael T. Compton, Psychiatry
  Recently published the book Veggie Smarts: A Doctor and Farmer Grows and Savors Eight Families of Vegetables.

Social Media Snapshot

In the News Highlights

• Universal Antivenom May Grow Out of Man Who Let Snakes Bite Him Hundreds of Times
  May 2, 2025
  The New York Times
  Over nearly 18 years, Tim Friede, 57, injected himself with carefully calibrated, escalating doses of venom to build his immunity to 16 deadly snake species. He also allowed the snakes — mostly one at a time, but sometimes two, as in the video — to sink their sharp fangs into him about 200 times.
  In collaboration with Peter Kwong, an immunologist at Columbia University, Dr. Jacob Glanville isolated broadly acting antibodies from Mr. Friede’s blood and created the combination treatment. The researchers tested antibodies from Mr. Friede’s blood against venom from 19 snake species. Adding a small molecule called varespladib and a second antibody fully protected mice against 13 snake species, and provided a partial defense against the remaining six.
• More Than 7 million Americans Have Alzheimer's. Research Cuts Could Slow the Fight.
  Apr 29, 2025
  USA TODAY
  José Alejandro Luchsinger-Stuart, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, said the federal government's funding cuts halted his multistate study of Alzheimer's and related dementias in people with prediabetes and Type 2 diabetes. "We were interrupted smack in the middle of the study," Luchsinger-Stuart told USA TODAY.
• Could This Be the End of Menopause as We Know it?
  Apr 30, 2025
  National Geographic
  Medical researchers are tackling those questions, exploring drug therapy and other treatments that will, if successful, result in significantly delaying the onset of menopause. “I think it’s long overdue,” says Zev Williams, director of the Columbia University Fertility Center, who is currently studying how to delay ovarian aging. “For too long, menopause [has been] treated as an inevitability rather than a modifiable health event.”