News Briefs

Gale and Ira Drukier Prize in Children’s Health Research

Dr. Lauren Henderson, a physician-scientist whose research focuses on children with difficult-to-treat juvenile idiopathic arthritis and other autoimmune disorders, has been awarded the 10th annual Gale and Ira Drukier Prize in Children’s Health Research.

The Drukier Prize honors an early-career pediatrician whose research promises to make important contributions toward improving the health of children and adolescents. Dr. Henderson is an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a pediatric rheumatologist at Harvard-affiliated Boston Children’s Hospital. She is being recognized for her research exploring how the immune system goes awry in children with autoimmune diseases, particularly juvenile idiopathic arthritis, and improving treatments for these children.

American Society for Clinical Investigation

Dr. Semra Etyemez and Dr. Jesse Platt have been honored with prestigious early-career awards from the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) for 2026. Dr. Etyemez, a research associate in obstetrics and gynecology and in psychiatry, received the ASCI’s Emerging Generation Award. Her research focuses on the biological mechanisms underlying perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, with the goal of identifying biomarkers and developing strategies to treat and prevent perinatal mental illness.

Dr. Platt, an assistant professor of medicine, received the ASCI’s Young Physician-Scientist Award. By probing the mobility of protein within cells, his research laboratory is uncovering fundamental processes that drive disease biology.

Dr. Hooman Kamel and Dr. Robert Peck have been elected members of ASCI for 2026. Research by Dr. Kamel, the Helen and Albert Moon Professor of Neurology, focuses on preventing strokes, especially those linked to blood clots and atrial fibrillation. Dr. Peck is an associate professor of medicine and pediatrics. His research focuses on improving healthcare in resource-poor populations in Africa, particularly for chronic diseases such as HIV, high blood pressure and heart disease.

National Honors

National Academy of Medicine

Dr. Carl F. Nathan, the R.A. Rees Pritchett Professor of Microbiology, has been awarded the David and Beatrix Hamburg Award for Advances in Biomedical Research and Clinical Medicine by the National Academy of Medicine. The award recognizes Dr. Nathan’s outstanding contributions that have advanced scientists’ understanding of the building blocks of innate immunity and how the immune system fights infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, and cancer.

Paul-Gallin Trailblazer Prize

Dr. Matthew Greenblatt, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, received the prestigious Paul-Gallin Trailblazer Prize for Physician-Scientists. Dr. Greenblatt, the Rohr Family Research Scholar, was selected by a jury of biomedical research leaders for the discovery that bone contains multiple populations of stem cells with different anatomic locations and functions. The findings have opened many new areas of research looking into targeted therapies for bone cancer, osteoporosis and rare bone conditions such as malformations of the skull.

Gilliam Fellows Program

Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences doctoral student Ana Campos Codo has been selected for the 2025 cohort of the Gilliam Fellows Program by Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Codo, a student in the Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis Ph.D. program working in the Sloan Kettering Institute lab of Dr. Justin Perry, an assistant professor at WCGS, is one of 30 graduate students representing 23 different institutions across the United States who were chosen this year.

Pew Awards

Dr. Anna Nam, an assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, has been selected as a 2025 Pew-Stewart Scholar for Cancer Research. One of five early-career scientists selected by the program, Dr. Nam is currently investigating the genetic determinants that influence the clinical manifestations of Hodgkin lymphoma in contrast to non-Hodgkin lymphoma, two major classes of blood cancer.

Dr. Maria Cecilia Lira, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Claire Vanpouille-Box, has been selected as a 2025 Pew Latin American Fellow in the Biomedical Sciences. Dr. Lira is studying how brain tumors called glioblastomas evolve to resist therapy. Her research aims to combine radiation therapy with an immune checkpoint inhibitor and a blocker of fatty acid synthesis, which tumors depend on for growth and proliferation.

Macy Faculty Scholar

Dr. Rohan Jotwani, the Nanette Laitman Education Scholar in Entrepreneurship and an assistant professor of clinical anesthesiology, has been selected for the prestigious Macy Faculty Scholars Program. A renowned expert and researcher in the field of medical extended reality, Dr. Jotwani’s project will focus on developing and scaling an artificial intelligence-powered extended reality interactive learning platform that uses a three-dimensional conversational agent learning ethics bot for medical ethics training.

Achievements

Mentoring Academy Council

Dr. Monika Safford (M.D. ’86), the John J. Kuiper Professor of Medicine, and Dr. Alice Tang, assistant professor of clinical medicine, received the Mentoring Academy Council Award for Mentoring Excellence in education. The award celebrates faculty who demonstrate exceptional commitment to mentoring students, trainees and fellow faculty across the Weill Cornell Medicine pillars of care, discover and teach.

Appointments

Dr. George Coukos, an internationally renowned expert on cancer immunology who served as the founding director of the Ludwig Lausanne Branch in Switzerland for the past 10 years, will launch the Ludwig Laboratory for Cell Therapy at Weill Cornell Medicine, housed within the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center. In this new role, he will fully leverage the expertise and clinical research capacity at Weill Cornell Medicine to achieve the two organizations’ shared goal of improving patients’ clinical outcomes.

Dr. Judy Tung, a leading expert in internal medicine and primary care, has been named chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine in the Weill Department of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

Dr. Y. Michael Shim, an esteemed physician-scientist who specializes in advanced pulmonary imaging and obstructive airway diseases, has been named chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. An innovative leader in advancing the management of pulmonary obstructive airway disease, Dr. Shim’s research focuses on developing and applying hyperpolarized Xenon gas MRI, which uses inhaled laser-polarized Xenon gas to produce high-resolution, 3D images of lung function without radiation.

American Headache Society

The American Headache Society recognized two Weill Cornell Medicine faculty members for their work advancing the field of headache medicine through groundbreaking research, dedicated service and innovative leadership. Dr. Matthew Robbins, the Louis and Rachel Rudin Foundation Education Scholar and an associate professor of neurology, received the Seymour Solomon Lecture Award, which recognizes a leader who has made outstanding contributions to clinical headache education. Dr. Bernice Grafstein, a professor emerita of physiology and biophysics, received a 2025 Distinguished Service Award, which is bestowed on people who have demonstrated long-term, meritorious service to both the American Headache Society and headache medicine. The award acknowledges Dr. Grafstein’s 1956 neuroscientific discovery that established the fundamental underlying mechanism of migraine aura.

Illustrations: Kathleen Fu