Ojas Shah, MD Appointed Chair of Urology Department
Dear Colleagues,
We are delighted to announce that Ojas Shah, MD, the George F. Cahill Professor of Urology, will serve as chair of the Department of Urology at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Urologist in Chief at NewYork-Presbyterian/CUIMC. Dr. Shah, who has served as interim chair of the Department of Urology since September 2024, is also the current director of the Division of Endourology and Stone Disease at CUIMC.
A nationally and internationally recognized expert in the medical and surgical management of patients with urinary stone disease, Dr. Shah’s clinical and research interests include surgical and metabolic treatments of kidney stone disease, minimally invasive urologic surgery, upper urinary tract urothelial carcinoma, ureteral strictures, ureteropelvic junction obstruction, and ureteral/renal reconstructive surgery. His passion lies in the development of new technologies to advance endourology to make surgeries safer and more effective for patients; he serves as a key opinion leader for several companies involved in this space. Dr. Shah has served as the principal investigator of numerous clinical trials and is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. He is co-editor of one of the most cited and widely used urology textbooks, Taneja’s Complications of Urologic Surgery, and is working on the release of the 6th Edition for 2026.
Dr. Shah is deeply dedicated to medical student and resident education, serving as the director of the endourology fellowship at Columbia. He previously was the urology residency program director at NYU School of Medicine. Dr. Shah has mentored numerous residents and fellows on their journey to academic careers in endourology and was selected Teacher of the Year for Columbia’s urology residency program in 2023.
After joining Columbia in 2015, Dr. Shah was appointed vice chair of the Department of Urology in 2023. He was previously an associate professor of urology and the director of the Endourology and Stone Disease Program at New York University Langone Medical Center. He additionally served as chief of urology at Bellevue Hospital while at NYU.
Dr. Shah is a member of the Endourological Society, the Endourology Disease Group for Excellence Research Consortium, the Research on Calculous Kinetics Society, and the Academy of Clinical Excellence at Columbia. He serves as chair of the American Urological Association’s (AUA) New Technologies and Imaging Committee and is on the American Board of Urology’s Examination Committee and the editorial board of the AUA Update Series. He previously served on the AUA's Surgical Management of Stones Guidelines Committee and was an assistant editor for the Journal of Urology.
Dr. Shah is a graduate of the Honors Program in Medical Education at Northwestern University School of Medicine. He completed general surgical and urologic training at New York University Medical Center and completed a fellowship in endourology, laparoscopy and metabolic stone disease at Wake Forest University Health Sciences Center.
We would like to thank the search committee, led by Lawrence R. Lustig, MD, chair of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, for their exceptional guidance throughout the search process.
Please join us in giving Dr. Shah a warm congratulations on his new role.
Katrina Armstrong, MD
Dean, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
Executive Vice President for Health and Biomedical Sciences, Columbia University
Chief Executive Officer, CUIMC
Steven J. Corwin, MD
President and Chief Executive Officer, NewYork-Presbyterian