Medical Center Dean Fischbach To Step Down After 5 Years

NEW YORK CITY (June 10, 2005) – Gerald D. Fischbach, M.D., Executive Vice President for Health & Biomedical Sciences at Columbia University, has announced his intention to step down from his leadership of Columbia University Medical Center no later than June 2006.

Dr. Fischbach has directed the medical center, which comprises Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons, Mailman School of Public Health, School of Nursing, and School of Dental and Oral Surgery, since February 2001. He also serves as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine for the College of Physicians & Surgeons.

The University Trustees of Columbia University and President Lee C. Bollinger were informed of Dr. Fischbach’s decision in a meeting late last week. President Bollinger, in consultation with the faculty of Medicine and Health & Biomedical Sciences, will lead the search process for the new Dean and Executive Vice President of the University, which he will outline later this summer.

Dr. Fischbach’s tenure steered Columbia’s health sciences through a critical transition period. He initiated a sweeping, campus-wide strategic planning process that identified significant challenges facing the core missions of research, education and patient care, and established goals to guide action in the succeeding years. A lengthy list of notable recruitments, the establishment of a stem cell consortium at Columbia, the launch of a distinctive new brand for Columbia’s health sciences enterprise, and a drive for translational science, which accelerates adoption of scientific advances into patient care, are among the Dean’s most notable accomplishments. Under his leadership, a $1 billion, seven-year capital campaign was begun to fund the many strategic priorities; that campaign has achieved 40 percent of its goal in just two years.

Dr. Fischbach is a physician-scientist who previously headed the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at the National Institutes of Health and had long academic careers at Harvard and Washington University before coming to Columbia.

He said that his decision to step down came after a months-long assessment of where to focus the next years of his professional life. “At this juncture in my life, I want to spend more time devoted to neuroscience – thinking about it, writing about it, conducting it,” he said.

“We are proud to have Gerry Fischbach represent Columbia University’s academic mission,” said President Bollinger. “Through his high standards and extraordinary scholarship, he has raised the level of performance throughout Columbia University Medical Center.”

“I respect Dr. Fischbach’s personal decision to change his career course at this time. He is a renowned scientific leader and has been diligent in meeting the many challenges facing medical education and the health care arena. I wish him all the successes in his future pursuits. I will miss him as a colleague and a friend,“ said Clyde Wu, M.D., a University Trustee of Columbia University and an alumnus of the College of Physicians & Surgeons.

A renowned neurobiologist, Dr. Fischbach received his M.D. degree in 1965 from Cornell University Medical College. He began his research career at the National Institutes of Health, to which he returned in 1998 as head of the NINDS. He subsequently served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, rising to the level of professor, before moving to Washington University in St. Louis as Edison Professor of Neurobiology and chair of the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology.

In 1990 he returned to Harvard as the Nathan March Pusey Professor of neurobiology and chair of the neurobiology departments at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital. He returned to the NIH in 1998 and assumed his position at Columbia in 2001. Throughout his career, he has studied the formation and maintenance of synapses, the junctions between nerve cells and their targets through which information is transferred.

Dr. Fischbach is a past president of the Society of Neuroscience and serves on several medical and scientific advisory boards. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a non-resident fellow of the Salk Institute.

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Columbia University in the City of New York is one of the top academic and research institutions in the world, conducting novel research in medicine, science, the arts, and the humanities. It includes three undergraduate schools, thirteen graduate and professional schools and a school of continuing education. www.columbia.edu

Columbia University Medical Center is an international leader in basic, pre-clinical and clinical research, patient care, and medical education. The medical center trains future professionals in health care and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, nurses, dentists, and others at the College of Physicians & Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the School of Dental & Oral Surgery and the School of Nursing. With a long history of contributing to valuable discoveries and advances in science and medicine, its faculty are leaders in initiatives that address the most pressing health issues of the day. www.cumc.columbia.edu

Columbia University Medical Center contact: Marilyn Castaldi, Chief Communications Officer: 212-342-2947; mlc2120@columbia.edu

Columbia University contact: Susan Brown, Assistant Vice President for Public Affairs: 212-854-2391; smb2119@columbia.edu