A Message from Katrina Armstrong, MD

Dear CUIMC Community,

As shared by Acting President Claire Shipman, I have decided to transition from my roles as Columbia’s Executive Vice President for Health and Biomedical Sciences, Columbia University Irving Medical Center CEO, and Dean of the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, to launch the Vagelos Institute for Basic Biomedical Research, a collaboration between Roy and Diana Vagelos and the University, which is dedicated to advancing transformative discovery and scientific impact.

Leading this medical center and medical school has been one of the great honors of my career. I am deeply grateful to our brilliant and dedicated students, trainees, educators, physicians, scientists, and administrators for the extraordinary work you do every day in service of our education, research, patient care, and community health missions. VP&S and CUIMC are exceptional institutions because of your talent, creativity, and commitment to improving human health. 

Looking ahead, I am excited to help realize Roy and Diana’s vision for the Vagelos Institute—a groundbreaking ecosystem for biomedical research and biomedical research education at Columbia that will invest in leading-edge discovery; nurture the next generation of innovative and collaborative scientists; and drive large-scale societal impact, at a time when the promise of science has never been greater, and the threats to its potential are increasingly daunting. It is among the greatest gifts of my career to work alongside Roy and Diana, who have had an unparalleled impact on science and medicine, and whose legacy will be felt for centuries to come.

Over the last four years, I have had the privilege of recruiting and promoting extraordinary leaders in key positions across the medical center and the medical school, including two deans, six vice deans, 11 chairs, seven vice presidents, a Chief Well Being Officer, a Chief Genomics Officer, and a Vice Dean for Community Health, among others. We have established new leadership roles for physician-scientist support, clinical trials, and research informatics, and created a multidisciplinary scientific research advisory committee.

We have made meaningful progress in support of our missions across the medical center—including interdisciplinary research initiatives and new CUIMC-wide offices devoted to well-being, academic, and community affairs, and student and campus services. Working with the University, we established the Columbia Institute in Cell Engineering and Therapy, advanced the Columbia Precision Medicine Initiative in partnership with the New York Genome Center, and supported the creation of the New York Biohub.

At VP&S, we undertook a comprehensive redesign of biomedical graduate education, created a new office to support physician-scientists across their careers, developed a new curriculum for our MD program, launched AI@VP&S, and established the Center for Innovation in Imaging Biomarkers and Integrated Diagnostics and the Center for Advanced Diagnostic Research. We expanded our clinical practice with new ambulatory sites and advanced patient safety and quality programs, including a new Center for Patient Safety Science. And we will soon open the Vagelos Innovation Labs, which will provide state-of-the-art infrastructure to power our research for generations.

None of this would have been possible without the efforts of so many, and I am grateful for your hard work and dedication. I am very thankful to NewYork-Presbyterian leadership, including current and former CEOs Brian Donley and Steve Corwin, and CUIMC Deans Lorraine Frazier, Jonathan Mermin, and Dennis Mitchell, and emerita deans Linda Fried and Christian Stohler for their partnership in our organizations’ collective commitment to improve health and alleviate suffering. I have been incredibly fortunate to work with our outstanding VP&S Board of Advisors, now led by co-chairs Richard Witten and Philip Milstein and vice-chairs Debby Weinberg and George Yancopoulos. I am also deeply grateful to Lee Bollinger, Minouche Shafik, and Claire Shipman for their guidance and support over these years.

Today’s CUIMC and VP&S community follows a long line of trailblazers who conferred the first medical degree in the United States in 1770, established the nation’s first academic medical center in 1928, and made scientific breakthroughs that prevented disease and saved millions of lives. I am so proud of what we have accomplished together as part of this rich, remarkable history, and I am confident our community will continue to reach unimagined new heights, as we work to improve health and well-being across the country and around the world.

With deep gratitude and enduring admiration,

Katrina Armstrong, MD

Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
Executive Vice President for Health and Biomedical Sciences, Columbia University
Chief Executive Officer, Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Harold and Margaret Hatch Professor of the University