CUIMC Update - June 4, 2025

June 4, 2025

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CUIMC Update is a weekly e-newsletter featuring medical center news and the accomplishments of our faculty, staff, and trainees. Please send your news, honors, and awards to cuimc_update@cumc.columbia.edu. Grants are provided by the Sponsored Projects Administration office.

News

CUIMC Open Forum: Tuesday, June 10 at 12 p.m.
All faculty and staff are invited to attend the next CUIMC Open Forum on Tuesday, June 10 at noon to hear from CUIMC leaders and learn about campus initiatives and updates.

Kathleen Sikkema Named Mailman School Interim Dean
Kathleen Sikkema, Stephen Smith Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, will serve as interim dean of the Mailman School of Public Health, effective July 1.

Medical Students Lead Inter-School Health Fair
Columbia medical students organized an inter-school health fair, bringing more than 120 volunteers from several NYC medical schools to Washington Heights to serve more than 500 community members.

Quarraisha Abdool Karim Elected Fellow of the Royal Society
Quarraisha Abdool Karim, an infectious diseases epidemiologist and professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific academy.

New Division of Pediatric Cardiothoracic Anesthesiology Launches
The new division, led by Richard J. Levy, will serve as an academic and clinical home for the rapidly advancing subspecialty and support the department’s ACGME-accredited PCTA fellowship.

Events

Grants

Mailman School of Public Health

  • Wafaa El-Sadr, ICAP
    $1,737,604 over three years for a subaward from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for "HPTN 113 and HPTN 113-01."
  • Yuan Zhang, Columbia Aging Center
    $2,451,044 over three years from the National Institute on Aging for "Engaging Aging Minds: Labor Force Participation, Stimulating Activities, and Cognitive Aging Across Diverse International Settings."

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

  • Miguel Arce, Sergievsky Center
    $2,288,528 over three years from the National Institute on Aging for "Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias: Cross-national longitudinal prognosis and risk factors."
  • Chao Lu, Genetics & Development
    $299,279 over two years from the ChadTough Foundation for "Investigating DIPG tumor dependencies on branched chain amino acid catabolism through therapeutic dietary restriction."
  • Andrew Goldstone and Megan Sykes, Surgery
    $750,000 over three years from the American Heart Association for "Achieving Tolerance to Cardiac Xenografts through Thymic Co-Transplantation."
  • Michio Hirano, Neurology
    $375,000 over three years from the Muscular Dystrophy Association for "Adult MDA and MDA/ALS Care Centers at Columbia University."
  • Krzysztof Kiryluk, Medicine
    $384,728 over four years for a subaward from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for "TNFRSF13B polymorphisms and immunity to transplantation."
  • Matteo Porotto, Pediatrics
    $994,755 over three years for a subaward from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for "Vaccine and Therapeutic Antibodies to Respiro, Rubula, Peribunya and Phenuiviridae (R2P2) ReVAMPP."
  • Samuel Sternberg, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics
    $500,000 over four years from the Edward Mallinckrodt, Jr. Foundation for "Exploring antiviral reverse transcriptases for next-generation genome engineering."
  • Megan Sykes and Tomoaki Kato, Medicine
    $6,524,001 over five years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for "Preclinical Studies of Living and Deceased Donor Liver Allograft Tolerance."
  • Sara Zaccara, Systems Biology
    $1,463,997 over three years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for "Programmable depletion and rescue platform to screen dynamic regulatory events during cellular differentiation."

Honors

Mailman School of Public Health

  • Norman J. Kleiman, Environmental Health Sciences
    Recognized at the 2025 Failla Memorial Dinner and Lecture for his radiological research. 

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

Social Media Snapshot

Columbia Medicine | People with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have a greater risk of cardiovascular disease. Columbia researchers helped make the game-changing... | Instagram

In the News Highlights

  • Study Finds a Steep Drop in Mothers’ Mental Health
    May 27, 2025
    The New York Times
    The mental health of mothers in the United States declined significantly from 2016 to 2023, according to a large new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Tuesday. The new study was not designed to address the question of why maternal mental health seems to be on the decline, but one of its authors, Jamie Daw, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, has some theories. Dr. Daw and others pointed to a number of factors that may have hurt maternal mental health over the past decade or so, including the high costs of housing, increasing child care costs and soaring food prices—which can each put financial and emotional pressure on families.
  • Want a COVID Vaccine? It Could Cost You $200.
    May 28, 2025
    USA TODAY
    On balance, the vaccine still provides a benefit, said Dr. Melissa Stockwell, division chief of child and adolescent health at Columbia University. "The point of a booster is to give protection against whatever the current circulating variant is and shorter-term protection against infection, but what we're really looking for is protection against severe outcomes," Stockwell said.
  • Women Are Drinking More—and Doctors Are Worried
    May 13, 2025
    The Wall Street Journal
    Doctors are now witnessing more hospitalizations of women for liver disease, and some researchers suspect alcohol consumption is contributing to rising rates of breast cancer. “It’s not pay parity; it is drinking parity, and that is a big issue in terms of health risks,” says Mary Beth Terry, a cancer epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.