Four VP&S Physician-Scientists Named Gerstner Scholars

The Louis V. Gerstner Jr. Scholars Program named its 18th group of outstanding early-career physician-scientists at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S) this spring.

Louis V. Gerstner Jr. made a gift to establish this extraordinary faculty development program in 2008. The Gerstner Scholars Program supports physician-scientists who conduct innovative translational research with the capability to improve human health.

For their three years in the program, each Gerstner Scholar receives funding for a specified research project. A fourth year of funding, awarded through the Gerstner Merit Award, is offered to one scholar each year whose research has made remarkable progress.

Spanning endocrinology, neurosurgery, immunology, and cardiology, this year’s scholars are advancing novel, high-impact research at the frontiers of medicine.

The 2026 Gerstner Scholars are:

• Joshua Cook, MD, PhD
• Brian Gill, MD
• Ian Mellis, MD, PhD
• Alexander Nectow, MD, PhD

The 2026 Merit Awardee is Edmond Chan, MD.

Read more about each awardee below:

Joshua Cook, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor of Medicine (Endocrinology)
Mentors: Blandine Laferrère, MD, PhD; Marc Hellerstein, MD, PhD (University of California, Berkeley)

Targeting Hyperinsulinemia in Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease

Dr. Cook’s research focuses on metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), the world’s leading chronic liver disorder commonly known as “fatty liver disease.” Dr. Cook hypothesizes that high levels of the hormone insulin can, in exchange for maintaining normal blood sugar, fuel MASLD by stimulating the liver to produce excessive fat. Dr. Cook plans to test this idea by using two strategies to temporarily limit the effect of high insulin in people with MASLD and obesity: (1) directly lowering insulin levels or (2) blocking insulin’s activity, both by using specialty medications. To evaluate the drugs’ impact, participants will receive special “tracer” molecules that the liver uses to build fats and can be detected in blood tests. Dr. Cook expects that lowering insulin levels or action will lower the liver’s fat production, which could be a new strategy for treating MASLD.

Brian Gill, MD

Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery
Mentor: Peter Canoll, MD, PhD

Targeting Kv3.1 to Normalize Inhibitory Circuit Dysfunction in Glioma

Dr. Gill is an early-career neurosurgeon with a strong clinical, basic science, and translational research interest in brain tumors. In the clinic, Dr. Gill cares for patients with malignant intra-axial brain tumors (such as diffusely infiltrating glioma) that often cause seizures and neurological deficits. The absence of targeted pharmacologic therapy to treat these symptoms represents a major source of morbidity in patients with glioma.

Previous work by Dr. Gill has identified a role for fast-spiking interneurons. Dr. Gill and his team will leverage this finding to determine if a novel drug can normalize interneuron function and thereby reduce seizure activity and tumor-induced neurological deficits.

Ian Mellis, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology
Mentor: David D. Ho, MD

Personalized Boosting with Age-specific COVID-19 Vaccine Formulations

A major focus of Dr. Mellis’s research is COVID-19-vaccine-elicited adaptive immune responses and how they relate to SARS-CoV-2 evolution. The goals of the project are to understand the influence of immune imprinting on vaccine-booster-elicited neutralizing antibody responses and to design more effective COVID-19 vaccines.

This work will not only directly lead to new candidate COVID-19 vaccines, but will also catalyze a suite of additional projects in the growing independent research group that Dr. Mellis leads. His project will provide a generalizable framework for designing vaccines against many other antigenically variable pathogens, including those that are of pandemic potential, and will inform future studies about the specificity of host adaptive immune responses and mechanisms of antibody evasion.

Alexander Nectow, MD, PhD

Instructor in Medicine (Cardiology) (tenure-track appointment pending)
Mentor: Steven Marx, MD

Neural Control of Cardiovascular Physiology

Dr. Nectow’s research focuses on brain-body interactions and their role in cardiovascular disease (CVD), the leading cause of death in the US. Currently, doctors lack highly effective treatments for many of its manifestations, including arrhythmia. Though the nervous system potently regulates cardiovascular function, and some of the most important CVD drugs target neural pathways, the precise mechanisms linking neural activity to heart rhythm remain poorly understood. This knowledge gap limits the ability of physician-scientists to develop new, effective therapies for diseases impacting millions.

For this investigation, Dr. Nectow will establish how specific neural circuits control heart rhythm and determine how dysfunction in these circuits contributes to arrhythmia. This project takes a technically and conceptually novel approach to identifying neural targets that could transform how CVD is treated. The long-term goal of Dr. Nectow’s laboratory is to transform basic, bench-top discoveries into clinically efficacious therapies, particularly in the domain of cardiometabolic disease.

Edmond Chan, MD

Assistant Professor of Medicine (Hematology and Oncology)

Mentor: Anil Rustgi, MD

Elucidating a novel vulnerability in cancers with chromosomal region 9p21.3 loss or microsatellite instability (MSI)

Using broad-based datasets for biomarker-driven therapeutic targets for GI cancers, Dr. Chan found PELO-HBS1L, a ribosome rescue complex, plays a critical role in the survival of cancers with chromosome 9p21.3 deletions. These cancers are enriched in aggressive cancers including glioblastoma, pancreatic, esophageal, and lung cancers. Dr. Chan found that cancers with 9p21.3 deletions can be killed if this complex is inhibited. This interaction is an example of a phenomenon called synthetic lethality in which loss of two specific genes is not tolerated by the cell, whereas loss of either one is. The approach helps solve one of the major challenges in cancer research: finding treatments that kill only cancer cells. With the support of the Gerstner Scholars Program, Dr. Chan will continue to advance the refined understanding of the relationship between PELO-HBS1L inhibition and lethality of cancers with chromosome 9p21.3 deletions, while building a successful career as an independent investigator.

As of 2026,  76 junior investigators have been named Gerstner Scholars, with 12 receiving the program’s distinguished Merit Award. Excluding the 2026 cohort, these scholars have collectively secured more than $428 million in additional research funding, a testament to the program’s effectiveness as a catalyst for scientific progress and leadership in biomedical research.

The impact of the Louis V. Gerstner Jr. Scholars Program is reflection of the life and vision of Louis V. Gerstner Jr., whose recent passing is felt deeply across the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons community. Mr. Gerstner believed in the power of discovery and in the responsibility to invest in the people who drive it.

The 2026 scholars exemplify the Louis V. Gerstner Jr. Scholars Program’s commitment to interdisciplinary innovation, rigorous science, and translational impact. From metabolic disease and cancer neuroscience to vaccine design, their work reflects a larger goal to deepen scientific understanding while advancing solutions that improve human health.