News Briefs

Saving More Hearts

NewYork-Presbyterian is expanding its renowned heart transplant program and increasing access to its world-class care for heart failure.

Exceptional heart transplant care is now available at the NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center campus on the Upper East Side, and heart failure services will expand throughout the region, particularly in Brooklyn and Queens. Since its inception in 1977, NewYork-Presbyterian’s heart transplant program has been based at the NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center campus in Washington Heights.

“The expansion of the heart transplant program to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center will enable our skilled team to broaden its reach, helping countless patients by offering the most innovative and comprehensive treatment in the areas of heart transplant and cardiac care,” says Dr. Leonard Girardi (M.D. ’89), cardiothoracic surgeon-in-chief at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and chair of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery and the O. Wayne Isom Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine.

A Prestigious Honor

Dr. David Lyden, the Stavros S. Niarchos Professor in Pediatric Cardiology, and Dr. Harel Weinstein, the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, were elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Fighting Antibiotic Resistance

Collaborations

A new intercampus center at Cornell will fight antibiotic resistance, a global health challenge that threatens to reverse critical advances in modern medicine.

Because antibiotic resistance arises in interconnected ecological niches, antimicrobial resistance demands a coordinated approach of expertise at Cornell’s Ithaca campus and Weill Cornell Medicine.

“Human medicine, veterinary medicine and agriculture rely on effective antibiotics,” says Dr. Kyu Rhee (M.D. ’91), co-director of the Cornell Center for Antimicrobial Resistance Research and Education and a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. “The concern is that antimicrobial resistance will turn into a whack-a-mole type of problem, where we solve it in one niche but exacerbate it in another, and then it comes back again.”

A Health and Technology Boost

A $20 million gift from Andrew H. ’71 and Ann R. Tisch will foster engagement and collaboration between Cornell Tech and Weill Cornell Medicine, catalyzing new discoveries at the intersection of health and technology — from precision, genomics-based medicine to the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve clinical care.

The gift will support recruitment of an inaugural chair of the new Department of Systems and Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, and endow a professorship to be held by the chair; it will also endow one senior- and one junior-level professorship at Cornell Tech in the area of health technology.

Taken together, the new positions will strengthen the links between both campuses’ foundational science, computational science and clinical care programs, while generating pioneering discoveries that will directly affect patients and improve their care.

Illustrations: Tim Boelaars