New Co-Director at the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center

Dear Colleagues,

A hallmark of CUIMC is that the quality of our faculty allows us to move from strength to strength in the leadership of our many centers and institutes that are expanding the frontiers of the health sciences. That is certainly the case at the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center (NBDC) where, at the start of this month, Anthony Ferrante, MD, PhD, took over as Co-Director from Rudy Leibel, MD, who co-founded the Center 25 years ago with Robin Goland, MD. Dr. Leibel will remain a Berrie Investigator and will turn his attention more fully to his research. 

Dr. Ferrante is Chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine & Nutrition and the Tilden-Weger-Bieler Professor of Medicine at VP&S. Along with Dr. Goland, Dr. Ferrante will now share the leadership of the Center where he has been studying diabetes, obesity, and related metabolic disorders for more than two decades and, at the start of his career, served as NBDC’s first postdoctoral fellow. Studies of the immune system’s response to changes in obesity and insulin resistance led by Dr. Ferrante have helped to establish the field of immunometabolism. This is an exciting time at the Berrie Center, which is transforming the care of people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes through the development of new technologies and therapies and is poised to build on this record with additional discoveries. 

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Ferrante and wishing him well in his new role. I also want to express on behalf of CUIMC our gratitude to Dr. Leibel for his steadfast commitment over the past quarter century and for leading the Berrie Center to become one of the largest research and clinical diabetes centers in the country. 

All my best, 

Katrina Armstrong, MD 
Chief Executive Officer, Columbia University Irving Medical Center  
Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons