In an interview earlier this year with Columbia Medicine, Dr. Lee Goldman, outgoing dean of the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons since 2006–and former chair of the AMSNY Board of Trustees–discusses the commitment, partnerships, and investments that led to the medical school’s success. Learn more.

Dr. Charles Brunicardi, senior vice president and dean of the College of Medicine at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, definitely understood the need for his students to maintain their education during the pandemic. SUNY Downstate is the only academic medical center that serves the 2.6 million residents of Brooklyn. Most of its patients are people of color with underlying health conditions.  Learn more.

Albany Medical College student, and AMSNY alum, Sarah Martinez has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Student National Medical Association (SNMA), the nation’s oldest and largest student-run organization focused on supporting current and future minority medical students. She will serve a one-year term as National Diversity Research Committee Co-Chairperson. Learn more.

New York Medical College (NYMC) and NYC Health + Hospitals/Lincoln, have entered into an academic affiliation designating the hospital as a teaching site for NYMC’s undergraduate medical students. The hospital will offer core clerkships in pediatrics, medicine, surgery and psychiatry, as well as elective rotations in emergency medicine and surgical and medical subspecialties. NYC Health + Hospitals/Lincoln is a full-service acute care hospital, serving the downtown Bronx community. Learn more.

The unprecedented generation of non-peer-reviewed scientific information about COVID-19 in just a few months helped galvanize more than 50 members of the Precision Immunology Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai into forming a group to parse through the data. The effort, called the Sinai Immunology Review Project, is composed of faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students.  Learn more.

When COVID-19 began to spread across the United States, Albany Medical College students wanted to help the Medical Center respond and educate others about the latest research. In early March, a team of nearly 20 third-year medical students established a Journal Club to discuss the latest literature. Ferdinand Venditti, M.D., Executive Vice President for System Care Delivery and Hospital General Director, asked that the Journal Club report its findings to the broader Albany Med community.  Learn more.

Thanks to funding from The Allen and Lillian D. Menkin Family Foundation, the Biomedical Ethics and Humanities Program at New York Medical College is collaborating with Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust to provide bioethics education as part of the program’s new Master’s degree in Biomedical Ethics and Humanities. Learn more.

Juan Carlos Balandrán, Ph.D., of Albert Einstein College of Medicine has been named a 2020 Pew Latin American Fellow in the Biomedical Sciences by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Dr. Balandrán, who studies how leukemic cells escape detection by the immune system, is preparing to conduct his research in the lab of Paul Frenette, M.D. A native of Mexico, Dr. Balandrán is one of only 10 scientists awarded the fellowship.  Learn more.

If you phone Jordan Levine pretty much anytime, day or night, you can hear the steady hum of a 3D printer in the background. The printer produces face shields, about 20 per day. Since mid-March and the peak of cases of COVID-19, when medical students were pulled from their clinical rotations, Levine and three of his classmates in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo have been working on the face shields.  Learn more.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented hospitalized patients with an unusual challenge: No visitors. To combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, hospital leaders, including those at Upstate Medical University, have allowed visitors only in the most dire situations. That left hospitalized patients- all patients, not just those with COVID-without the companionship and support offered by family and friends coming by.  Learn more.

They came to SUNY Downstate fresh from medical school or residency ready to dive into their chosen specialties. Today, 300 graduates of SUNY Downstate’s residency and fellowship programs leave as battle-hardened veterans of the worst pandemic in more than 100 years. Even now, as they prepare for the next part of their careers, the COVID-19 pandemic is changing their experiences.  Learn more.

Virtual pomp and circumstance prevailed on Thursday night in a graduation of 62 Mount Sinai residents, and while commencement exercises via Zoom have become the new normal, a special performance by celebrity performers added an element of surprise for the newly minted doctors: an original song written just for them. The ceremony was held by the Department of Medicine at The Mount Sinai Hospital, which is part of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.  Learn more.

Two distinguished Weill Cornell Medicine physician-scientists have been elected to the prestigious Association of American Physicians (AAP). Dr. David Cohen, chief of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and Dr. Silvia Formenti, chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology, join 70 other leading physician-scientists as the AAP’s 2020 inductees.  Learn more.

Sabrina Diano, PhD, has been appointed the new director of the Institute of Human Nutrition (IHN) and will join VP&S in the fall. She will succeed Richard Deckelbaum, MD, who has led the Institute since 1992. Diano is currently the Richard Sackler Family Professor of Cellular & Molecular Physiology at Yale University School of Medicine and also a full professor in the departments of neuroscience and comparative medicine.  Learn more.

An internationally renowned cancer and nutrition expert has joined the University at Buffalo, UBMD Physicians Group and Great Lakes Cancer Care Collaborative, and will serve as director of a new center focusing on nutrition and cancer. Roberto Pili, MD, began his appointment as professor of medicine, chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology and associate dean for cancer research in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB on May 4.  Learn more.

Three years after joining the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network (OPTN) Ethics Committee for the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), Andrew Flescher, PhD, Core Faculty, Program in Public Health; Professor of Family, Population, and Preventive Medicine; Professor of English at Stony Brook University, has been selected to serve as Vice Chair of the OPTN Ethics Committee. UNOS is a non-profit organization that manages the nation’s organ transplant system under contract with the federal government. Learn more.

Dr. Samara Ginzburg has been named as the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Ambassador for the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. Established in 1995, the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine® (ELAM) program offers an intensive one-year fellowship of leadership training designed for senior women faculty with high potential for assuming executive leadership positions at academic health centers in medicine, dentistry, public health and pharmacy. Dr. Ginzburg is the first educator from the Zucker School of Medicine to receive this honored accolade.  Learn more.

On June 8, members of the CUIMC community joined with colleagues at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine to observe 9 minutes of silence in a symbol of unity against racism and a shared commitment to making Black lives matter, here at Columbia and beyond. The moment came as tens of thousands of people have gathered in New York City and across the nation for two weeks to protest the death of George Floyd and the disproportionate killing of Black people by police. Learn more.

On Friday, June 5, at 1 p.m., members of the Einstein and Montefiore community, joined by faculty members who are staff at Jacobi Medical Center, gathered along the lawns adjacent to the Price Center/Block Research Pavilion for a moment of solidarity in support of calls to reform the systemic racism in the United States that contributes to the murder of unarmed Black Americans like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.  Learn more.

Dr. Smruti Desai, TouroCOM Harlem ’17, has been working nonstop since the pandemic began, helping patients and families of the Central Brooklyn community where she works as a third-year resident in emergency medicine. At both Kings County Hospital Center and SUNY Downstate Medical Center, she has seen how health disparities among the patient population have led the community to suffer some of the highest mortality rates in the country.  Learn more.

The Chinese Business Association of New York recently donated 1000 isolation gowns and 200 face shields to St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx. The CBANY also made a separate donation of 200 face shields to CUNY School of Medicine for our students who started clinical rotations on Monday, June 15, 2020.  Learn more.

As thousands of New Yorkers began mobilizing to protest police brutality and the racist treatment of Black individuals, there were growing concerns about how this would contribute to coronavirus. Although the daily positive testing rate in New York remains at around 1%, other states across the nation are seeing sharp spikes in cases. Learn more.

In recognition of its commitment to environmental stewardship and sustainability, Stony Brook University Hospital has received the 2020 Top 25 Environmental Excellence Award, the nation’s premier recognition program for environmental performance in the healthcare sector.  The Top 25 are healthcare leaders with comprehensive sustainability programs and an organizational culture focused on environmental stewardship. Learn more.

Leaders at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine’s Middletown campus expect to soon earn accreditation to expand the school’s physician assistant program to the Hudson Valley. The new program means major growth for the Manhattan-based private college and university system’s Mid-Hudson medical school campus, as Touro seeks to add much-needed local providers.  Learn more.