Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons Faculty Tenured in 2024
Fourteen professors joined the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons' tenured faculty in 2024. Tenure is a distinction that recognizes scholarly excellence, demonstrated capacity for imaginative, original work, and great promise for continued contributions at the leading edge of one's field.
Dmitriy Aronov
Associate Professor of Neuroscience (in the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute)
Dmitriy Aronov is a pioneering scholar in the field of neuroscience, specializing in neural processes that underlie the formation and storage of memory.
Dr. Aronov utilizes chickadees and other birds, rather than the usual rodent models, to study the food storage behavior of birds to better understand how the hippocampus encodes, stores, and retrieves memory. Among his most important papers is a 2021 publication in Science, “Spatial representations in the hippocampus of a food-caching bird.” The paper identifies similarities between bird neural patterns and mammal neural networks, showing that non-mammalian species have place cells like mammals, but the coding features differ due to ecological and evolutionary factors. A recent paper, “Barcoding of episodic memories in the hippocampus of a food-caching bird” finds that birds’ hippocampal activity during food storing and caching events was notably different from the activity during efforts to retrieve and check food caches. For his scholarship, Dr. Aronov has received the Director’s New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health, the Robertson Neuroscience Investigator Award, and the Beckman Young Investigator Award, among others. He has also published in top-ranked journals including Science, Journal of Comparative Neurology, and Nature Methods.
Dr. Aronov earned his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the Columbia faculty in 2017.
Dimitriy Aronov's Faculty Profile
Nicholas Arpaia
Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
Nicholas Arpaia’s research focuses on the immune system’s interaction with environmental microbes. His scholarship specifically explores how immune cells affect tissue repair and regeneration and what the molecular drivers are of these processes.
One of Dr. Arpaia’s key research streams has been exploring the role of regulatory T cells (Tregs) in tissue repair in organs such as the lungs and the liver, as well as how microbial metabolites promote the generation of T cells. He has also collaborated on developing microbial therapies to enhance cancer tumor immunity, including genetically engineering E. coli to target specific immune pathways. He has published in several journals including Cell, Nature, and Immunity.
Dr. Arpaia earned his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the Columbia faculty in 2016.
Nicholas Arpaia's Faculty Profile
Hülya Bayır
Professor of Pediatrics
Hülya Bayır is a leader in the field of pediatric medicine and has made seminal contributions to the understanding of the metabolic pathways and enzymatic cascades underlying brain damage after trauma or ischemia.
Her work has implications for treatment that can slow down neuronal degeneration in children’s brains after injury, to reduce long-term disability and cognitive defects. Her findings are revolutionary in showing how damage after brain injury is not random, but regulated by specific molecular mechanisms. Dr. Bayır's discoveries have been featured in numerous publications, including in high-impact journals such as Cell, Nature Neuroscience and Nature Chemical Biology. She has also been the recipient of multiple awards, including the 2021 Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award. She is an elected member of The Association of American Physicians and of The American Society for Clinical Investigation and has been highly successful in securing grant funding, including multiple awards from the NIH.
Dr. Bayır earned her MD from Hacettepe University. She served on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh before joining the Columbia faculty in 2023.
Luke Berchowitz
Associate Professor of Genetics and Development (in the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain)
Luke Berchowitz’s research focuses on how biomolecular assemblies give rise to emergent properties beyond those of the constituent proteins and how healthy cells regulate these structures.
As a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Berchowitz determined that, during meiosis, cells form amyloid-like assemblies of the RNA-binding protein Rim4. It is the regulated assembly and subsequent clearance of these structures that is essential for the regulation of protein synthesis during gametogenesis. After joining the Columbia faculty in 2016, his lab has used this system to make discoveries regarding how amyloids are broken down by cells and how these structures act as defense mechanisms against genetic parasites called retrotransposons. These studies were published in 2018 and 2020 in Developmental Cell and in 2021 in Cell Reports. He published in 2023 in EMBO Journal that Rim4 binds its mRNA targets more efficiently than in its monomeric state, revealing a causal connection between assembly and translational repression. His lab is now working to understand how proteins that evolved from retrotransposons preserve mammalian fertility. Dr. Berchowitz has received significant funding from the National Institutes of Health. His awards include the Irma T. Hirschl Trust Career Scientist Award.
Dr. Berchowitz earned his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Luke Berchowitz' Faculty Profile
Joshua Gordon
Professor of Psychiatry, Chair of the Department of Psychiatry
Joshua Gordon is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist whose research focuses on the neural underpinnings of spatial working memory and its disruption in schizophrenia.
Dr. Gordon’s work identifies how schizophrenia-associated genes alter circuit function and pinpoints potential targets for interventions that could reverse these dysfunctions. He has published in top-tier journals such as Nature, Science, and Cell, and has a history of impressive funding for this impactful research. Internationally recognized, Dr. Gordon has received numerous accolades, including the Daniel H. Efron Research Award, the IMHRO Rising Star Award, and the A.E. Bennett Research Award from the Society for Biological Psychiatry. In 2018, he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Dr. Gordon earned his MD and PhD from the University of California, San Francisco. He previously served on the Columbia faculty before become the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health in 2016. Dr. Gordon returns to Columbia this year to serve as Chair of the Department of Psychiatry, Executive Director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and Psychiatrist-in-Chief at New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
Joshua Gordon's Faculty Profile
Jose Gutierrez
Associate Professor of Neurology
Jose Gutierrez is a leader in the study of arterial health, focusing on brain blood vasculature and their correlation with diseases such as stroke, dementia and HIV-related brain illnesses.
Contrary to what has been the conventional wisdom in the field, Dr. Gutierrez's scholarly work demonstrates how the enlargement of brain vessels is distinct from and does not cause atherosclerosis. Building one of the largest collection of postmortem brain arterial samples and leveraging epidemiological studies from around the world, Dr. Gutierrez has demonstrated that enlargement of brain vessels is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s dementia. He is also developing techniques to contribute to precision medicine efforts in vascular diagnosis, as well as identifying risk phenotypes for those yet to experience strokes. Dr. Gutierrez has received extensive funding for this research and has published in top journals such as the Journal of American College of Cardiology, JAMA Neurology and Neurology.
Dr. Gutierrez earned his MD from the University of Guadalajara in Mexico. He joined the Columbia faculty in 2013.
Jose Gutierrez' Faculty Profile
Guillermo Horga
Associate Professor of Psychiatry
Guillermo Horga is a leading scholar investigating neurobiological and cognitive mechanisms that underlie psychotic symptoms associated with schizophrenia. He is known for using computational and neuroimaging approaches including MRI imaging to understand belief formation in psychosis.
One of his most significant findings has been discovering that excess striatal dopamine is associated with change in cognitive computational processes linked to hallucinations. Dr. Horga has published in top-tier journals such as PNAS, Brain, Current Biology, as well as in top psychiatry journals such as JAMA Psychiatry and American Journal of Psychiatry. He has received awards such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Rising Star Lecture Series in 2019 and the BBRF Maltz Prize for Innovative and Promising Schizophrenia Research in 2018, as well as substantial grant funding from the NIH.
Dr. Horga earned his MD from Miguel Hernández University and his PhD from the University of Barcelona. He joined the Columbia faculty in 2013.
Guillermo Horga's Faculty Profile
Despina Kontos
Herbert and Florence Irving Professor of Radiological Sciences (in Radiology and the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center)
Despina Kontos is a leader in the field of biomedical imaging. Her scholarship focuses on the detection of cancer, interpreting mammography and improving imaging technologies to detect cancer and monitor cancer therapies.
Dr. Kontos’ contributions include investigating how the role of breast tissue heterogeneity, along with variations in body, fat, race, ethnicity and drugs, might impact breast density and in turn, how breast density impacts imaging. More recently, she is expanding the scope of her studies to adapt her approaches to breast imaging for lung cancer treatment. She has published in leading radiology journals, as well as engineering journals such as The Proceedings of the IEEE, and cancer publications. Dr. Kontos has received funding from the National Institutes of Health and foundations like the American Cancer Society. She has also been awarded a number of awards. In 2011, she received the Young Investigator Award from the American College of Radiology, and in 2014 she received the ECOG-ACRIN Young Investigator Award of Distinction for Translational Research. She was awarded the Academy for Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Research Distinguished Investigator Award in 2020.
Dr. Kontos earned her PhD from Temple University. She served on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania before joining the Columbia faculty in 2023.
Despina Kontos' Faculty Profile
Peter Kwong
Richard J. Stock Professor of Medical Sciences (in Medicine)
Peter D. Kwong is a renowned scholar in the field of structural biology. He is known for his impactful research on antibody-pathogen recognition and for designing effective vaccines.
Most notable may be his development of a structure-based vaccine, which is now FDA approved for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the leading cause of hospitalization for infants under 2 years of age. His studies have also led to pioneering developments of antibodies and vaccines against HIV and SARS-CoV-2. He has contributed to the advancement of antibodies and vaccines other pathogens, including influenza and malaria. Dr. Kwong has numerous patents (23 approved and 25 active applications under consideration). He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and has received numerous awards including the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in Biomedical Sciences, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the Norman P. Salzman Award in Virology, the SER-CAT Outstanding Science Award, and multiple NIAID merit and NIH Director’s Awards.
Dr. Kwong earned his PhD from Columbia University. Before joining the Columbia faculty in 2023, he served as Chief of the Structural Biology Section, Vaccine Research Center, NIH.
Adam Mor
Herbert and Florence Irving Associate Professor of Rheumatology (in Medicine) to Honor Dr. Ralph Blume
Adam Mor is a physician-scientist whose translational research focuses on signaling events regulating T lymphocyte functions, which are important to immune response.
His recent work has focused on how auto-immune diseases are triggered when patients receive cancer therapy using checkpoint inhibitor therapies (CITs). Dr. Mor’s research is distinguished by its focus on understanding the mechanisms that control and regulate immune response at the cellular and molecular level and he has developed improved CITs and other therapies that can target inhibitor pathways. This work has been published in high impact journals such as Nature Cell Biology and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Given the tremendous translational importance of the work, Dr. Mor has received a number of grants, including three recent awards from National Institutes of Health. He also holds an impressive number of patents. A notable honor includes the “Accelerating Cancer Therapeutics Pilot Award” in 2022–2023.
Dr. Mor earned his MD and PhD from Tel Aviv University. He served on the faculty of New York University before joining the Columbia faculty in 2018.
Aimee Payne
Herbert and Florence Irving Professor of Dermatology, Chair of the Department of Dermatology
Aimee Payne is a world-leading authority on autoimmunity, with particular expertise in pemphigus vulgaris, a life-threatening autoimmune blistering disorder of the skin and mucous membranes caused by pathogenic antibodies produced by B cells.
Dr. Payne and her group have made seminal contributions to the understanding of the pathogenesis of the disease and to the development of precision medicine to treat it. A major scientific contribution has been re-engineering CAR-T cell therapy to target specific pathogenic B cells, rather than deplete healthy B cells, in a range of autoimmune diseases including pemphigus vulgaris and myasthenia gravis. She co-founded the company Cabaletta Bio, which is now carrying out clinical studies utilizing her research findings to develop targeted cellular immunotherapies for autoimmune diseases. Dr Payne is well funded, has authored 60 original peer-reviewed publications—many of which appear in high impact journals including Science, Nature, and others—and has been the recipient of a number of honors and awards.
Dr. Payne earned her MD and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis. She served on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania before joining the Columbia faculty in 2023.
Tannishtha Reya
Herbert and Florence Irving Professor of Basic Science Research in Physiology and Cellular Biophysics (in the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center)
Tannishtha Reya has made seminal contributions to the field of cancer biology by defining how cancers subvert normal stem cell signals to grow, progress, and evade therapy. She has also pioneered the development of new tools for visualizing molecular signals in living cells and imaging cancers within the native microenvironment.
Dr. Reya’s research has contributed to multiple clinical trials including ones that led to the approval of Glasdegib for AML, which doubles survival for patients in combination with low dose chemotherapy. Her work has been recognized by several awards including the highly competitive National Cancer Institute’s Outstanding Investigator award, the NIH PECASE award, and the NIH Director’s Pioneer award, designed to support exceptionally creative scientists. At Columbia, Dr. Reya serves as the Associate Director of Translational Research at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center and Director of the Irving Cancer Drug Discovery Program, reflecting her commitment to accelerate the transition of key scientific discoveries into new approaches for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
Dr. Reya earned her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. She served on the faculty of Duke University and the University of California, San Diego, before joining the Columbia faculty in 2022.
Tannishtha Reya's Faculty Profile
Samuel Sternberg
Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics
Sam Sternberg is a leader in the fields of CRISPR, genome engineering, and antiviral immunity, focusing on diverse mechanisms of RNA-guided biology from bacteria to humans. His discoveries of RNA-guided transposases and RNA-templated reverse transcriptases have been accompanied by improvements in gene insertion technology, towards universal strategies for treating genetic disease. His work has been published in top-tier journals including Nature and Science, and he regularly presents internationally.
Dr. Sternberg has earned several grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, and was formerly a Pew Biomedical Scholar and Sloan Research Fellow. He received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation and is the recent recipient of the Amgen Young Investigator Award. As of September 2024, he is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Dr. Sternberg earned his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and his BA from Columbia University. He joined the Columbia faculty in 2018.
Samuel Sternberg's Faculty Profile
Marcos Vidal Melo
Professor of Anesthesiology
Marcus Vidal Melo is the Chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Anesthesia in the Columbia University Irving Medical Center Department of Anesthesiology. Dr. Vidal Melo researches acute lung injury, mechanical ventilation, perioperative pulmonary complications, and functional lung imaging.
Dr. Vidal Melo has advanced techniques for quantifying pulmonary metabolism and inflammation with PET imaging. He has also developed and implemented large sheep models of pulmonary dysfunction to replicate and investigate conditions in human disease, such as pulmonary embolism, ventilator-induced lung injury, and systemic endotoxemia, among others. He is using findings from these studies in combination with clinical trials, large registry studies and clinical physiological investigations to understand and develop strategies to minimize perioperative lung dysfunction in mechanically ventilated patients. His scholarship has produced new treatments such as the Thoratec Left Ventricular Assist Device and the Abiomed Artificial Heart. He has received funding for his impactful research from the National Institutes of Health and other funding sources.
Dr. Vidal Melo earned his MD from Fluminense Federal University and his PhD from the University of Heidelberg. He served on the faculty of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Harvard University before joining the Columbia faculty in 2021.