Ojas Shah Appointed Chair of Urology
Ojas Shah, the George F. Cahill Professor of Urology, was named chair of the Department of Urology at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and urologist-in-chief at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Shah has served as interim chair of the department since Sept. 2024 and was appointed vice chair of the department in 2023. He succeeds James McKiernan, currently CEO of ColumbiaDoctors and senior vice dean for clinical affairs at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Shah is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in the medical and surgical management of patients with urinary stone disease and director of the Division of Endourology and Stone Disease at VP&S. His 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, and Shah serves as a key opinion leader for several companies involved in this space. He has served as the principal investigator of numerous clinical trials and is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. Shah 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.
As an educator, Shah is deeply dedicated to medical student and resident training and has served as the director of the endourology fellowship at Columbia. He has mentored numerous residents and fellows on their journey to academic careers in endourology and was selected Teacher of the Year in Columbia’s urology residency program in 2023.
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 University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. He serves as chair of the American Urological Association’s (AUA) New Technologies and Imaging Committee and is member of 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.
Before joining Columbia in 2015, Shah was an associate professor of urology and the director of the Endourology and Stone Disease Program at New York University Langone Medical Center and the urology residency program director at NYU School of Medicine. He additionally served as chief of urology at Bellevue Hospital while at NYU.
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.