Psychiatry | Mount Sinai Today

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Awards Endowed Professorships for 2021

Sep 30, 2021 | Featured, Psychiatry

Seventeen renowned faculty members at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have been honored with Mount Sinai’s 2021 endowed professorships for their dedication to excellence in research, education, and clinical care. They are:

Oren J. Becher, MD

Oren J. Becher, MD, Steven Ravitch Chair in Pediatric Hematology

Oren J. Becher, MD, is the Chief of the Jack Martin Division of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital and Professor of Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Becher is a physician-scientist focused on improving the standard of care for children with brain tumors, particularly diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma—or, DIPG—an incurable pediatric brain cancer. He joined Mount Sinai in 2021 from the Northwestern University School of Medicine where in addition to appointments in the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, he also maintained clinical responsibilities at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

By studying the function of the genetic alterations present in DIPG, Dr. Becher’s laboratory co-discovered the presence of somatic activating mutations in a gene not previously implicated in cancer, called ACVR1 or ALK2, in 25 percent of children with DIPG, and subsequently developed genetically engineered mouse models that recapitulate the genetic alterations of the human disease. Additionally, Dr. Becher’s laboratory has expanded efforts to develop models for other pediatric brain cancer subtypes, using these models to study the tumor microenvironment and to evaluate novel therapeutics that help prioritize clinical trials for children with DIPG.

Dr. Becher obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his medical degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He completed his pediatric residency at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. and fellowships in pediatric hematology-oncology and neuro-oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Supinda Bunyavanich, MD, MPH, MPhil

Supinda Bunyavanich, MD, MPH, MPhil, Mount Sinai Professor in Allergy and Systems Biology

Bunyavanich, MD, MPH, MPhil is a Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Bunyavanich is also a practicing allergist and immunologist and the Associate Director of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute.

Dr. Bunyavanich’s research, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), combines tools in epidemiology, multi-omics, and systems biology to elucidate and understand the pathobiology of asthma and allergic diseases. Her research group works with human cohorts to identify risk factors, mechanisms, and potential therapies for these disorders using data science and integrative -omics approaches. Findings from her lab include the identification of a nasal biomarker of asthma by machine learning analyses of nasal transcriptome data, characterization of the airway and gut microbiomes in asthma and food allergy, and identification of master regulator genes of peanut allergy and asthma.

In addition to directing a research group at Mount Sinai, Dr. Bunyavanich provides patient care as a clinical allergist and immunologist, teaches medical and graduate students, and mentors pre- and post-doctoral trainees. She has mentored more than 70 trainees who have gone on to graduate and medical school and faculty positions. Dr. Bunyavanich is a frequent invited speaker at national and international meetings, and serves as a grant reviewer and on advisory groups for the NIH. Dr. Bunyavanich received the Harvard Medical School Shore Award for Scholars in Medicine and is recognized as a Castle Connelly Exceptional Woman in Medicine.

Dr. Bunyavanich earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard University, MD from Harvard Medical School, MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health, and MPhil from the University of Cambridge. She completed her internal medicine residency at Massachusetts General Hospital-Harvard Medical School, her allergy and immunology fellowship at Brigham & Women’s Hospital-Harvard Medical School, and her postdoctoral research fellowship at the Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham & Women’s Hospital-Harvard Medical School.

Kirk N. Campbell, MD

Kirk N. Campbell, MD, Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Professor of Medicine

Kirk N. Campbell, MD, is Associate Professor of Medicine (Nephrology), Vice Chair for Diversity and Inclusion, and Director of the Nephrology Fellowship Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Campbell is a physician-scientist working to characterize novel pathways in kidney podocyte injury and survival. His clinical interest is in human glomerular disease.

In addition to treating patients, Dr. Campbell advances the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of glomerular disease progression while identifying potential targets for therapeutic intervention. He leads an NIH-funded research program focused on podocyte cell biology, experimental glomerular disease, and clinical trials in the rare kidney disease space. Key findings include the identification of dendrin and the Hippo pathways target Yes-associated protein (YAP) as regulators of podocyte survival and plasminogen as a targetable biomarker in glomerular disease. Dr. Campbell has been a principal investigator for clinical trials testing the safety and efficacy of agents in development for focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, IgA nephropathy, membranous nephropathy, and lupus nephritis.

Dr. Campbell received his medical degree from the University of Connecticut and completed his internal medicine residency at Yale University before conducting clinical and research training in nephrology at Mount Sinai. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, Past-President of the New York Society of Nephrology, a member of the Board of Directors of the Nephcure Foundation, and a standing member of the Pathobiology of Kidney Disease study section at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Campbell also serves on the Medical Advisory Board of the National Kidney Foundation of Greater New York, and is a member of the American Society of Nephrology’s grants review and kidney week education committees.

Kecia N. Carroll, MD, MPH

Kecia N. Carroll, MD, MPH, Debra and Leon Black Professor in Pediatrics

Kecia N. Carroll, MD, MPH, is Chief of the Division of General Pediatrics, Professor of Pediatrics, and Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Carroll is a board-certified general pediatrician, clinical investigator, and epidemiologist. She joined Mount Sinai in 2021 from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where in addition to a faculty appointment in the Department of Pediatrics, she also served as the Director of Faculty Inclusion and Diversity in the Pediatric Office of Faculty Development, and Chair of the Diversity Committee for the Master of Public Health program.

While at Vanderbilt, Dr. Carroll spearheaded efforts to foster an inclusive environment and created mentoring and career development opportunities for faculty, trainees, and students. She serves as a mentor for faculty and trainees across various career stages and academic tracks. Through her K24 Midcareer Investigator Award funded by the National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute through the National Institutes of Health, she mentors early career investigators and contributes to efforts supporting research mentor training.

Dr. Carroll’s current NIH-funded research program investigates how environmental exposures—including stress, nutritional exposures, and environmental toxicants—during critical periods of development influence childhood asthma risk, with a focus on potential modifiable risk factors. At Mount Sinai, she collaborates with investigators across the Health System, including within the Institute for Exposomic Research.

Dr. Carroll obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree from Vassar College and her medical degree from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She completed her pediatric residency at the University of California San Francisco and a general academic pediatrics research fellowship at Vanderbilt.

Jaime Chu, MD

Jaime Chu, MD, Mount Sinai Professor in Pediatric Liver Research

Jaime Chu, MD, is the Associate Chief of the Division of Pediatric Hepatology, Medical Director of Pediatric Liver Transplantation, and Director of the Pediatric Physician-Scientist Residency Program at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital and the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute at Mount Sinai, where she mentors resident and fellow trainees interested in pursuing a career as a physician-scientist.

Dr. Chu is a physician-scientist in pediatric hepatology. Her long-term goal is to utilize collaborative science and integrate basic and clinical research towards improving our understanding of the mechanisms underlying pediatric liver disease and to apply this knowledge towards the development of much needed therapeutic options for children with liver disease.

She is the Director of the Molecular Liver Physiology and Metabolism Lab, where she leads a basic research group that focuses on how sugar metabolism pathways work together to regulate liver development and disease. Dr. Chu’s team capitalizes on the strength of the zebrafish as a tool to investigate metabolic mechanisms of liver fibrosis and test potential anti-fibrotic therapies.

Dr. Chu’s clinical research includes participation as site Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator in NIH-funded consortia, including a U01-funded project in pediatric acute liver failure and other industry-sponsored pediatric drug trials for genetic cholestatic liver disease, biliary atresia, and viral hepatitis. Her research has been awarded the Gilead Sciences Research Scholars Liver Disease Award, American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) Foundation Bridge Award, and funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) to examine the role of mannose metabolism in liver fibrosis. Dr. Chu is a member of the NIDDK Study Section for Fellowship Awards and was selected to serve as a member of the AASLD Task Force on COVID-19.

She received her BA magna cum laude from Harvard University and her MD from New York University School of Medicine. She completed her General Pediatrics residency training at Northwestern University/Children’s Memorial Hospital (now Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago) and her fellowship in Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition both at Children’s Memorial Hospital and at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Kristen Dams-O’Connor, PhD

Kristen Dams-O’Connor, PhD, Jack Nash Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine

Kristen Dams-O’Connor, PhD, is Director of the Brain Injury Research Center of Mount Sinai and Professor in the Departments of Rehabilitation Medicine and Neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Dr. Dams-O’Connor conducts multidisciplinary research dedicated to improving the lives of people living with brain injury. Her work aims to identify mechanisms, risk, and protective factors to improve long-term outcomes in individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and repetitive head trauma sustained through sports participation, military service, and intimate partner violence. Her team uses modern psychometric and statistical techniques to measure individual differences in trajectories of change over time among survivors of TBI. One goal of this work is to improve diagnosis of secondary post-traumatic conditions during life so they can be treated.

Dr. Dams-O’Connor also leads the Late Effects of TBI Project, a TBI brain donor program focused on characterizing the clinical phenotype and postmortem pathological signatures of post-traumatic neurodegeneration and their associations with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. She is Project Director of the New York Traumatic Brain Injury Model System of Care, one of 16 centers of excellence for TBI research and clinical care in the United States.

Her research is supported by federal grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, the United States Department of Defense, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. Dr. Dams-O’Connor has published more than 150 manuscripts and chapters on TBI treatments and outcomes, and has presented her research internationally.

Thomas J. Fuchs, Dr.sc.

Thomas J. Fuchs, Dr.sc., Mount Sinai Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Human Health

Thomas J. Fuchs, Dr.sc. is a scientist in the groundbreaking field of computational pathology, focused on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze images of tissue samples to identify disease, recommend treatment, and predict outcome. In October 2020, he was appointed Co-Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai, Dean of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health, and Professor of Computational Pathology and Computer Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. In this role, Dr. Fuchs leads the next generation of scientists and clinicians using artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop novel diagnostics and treatments for acute and chronic disease.

Dr. Fuchs’s work includes developing novel methods for analysis of digital microscopy slides to better understand genetic mutations and their influence on changes in tissues. He has been recognized for developing large-scale systems for mapping the pathology, origins, and progress of cancer. This breakthrough was achieved by building a high-performance compute cluster to train deep neural networks at petabyte scale.

Before joining Mount Sinai, Dr. Fuchs was Director of the Warren Alpert Center for Digital and Computational Pathology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and Associate Professor at Weill Cornell Graduate School for Medical Sciences. At MSK, he led a laboratory focused on computational pathology and medical machine learning. Dr. Fuchs also co-founded Paige.AI in 2017 and led its initial growth to the leading AI company in pathology. He is a former research technologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and visiting scientist at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Fuchs holds a Doctor of Science in Machine Learning from ETH Zurich and a MS in Technical Mathematics from Graz Technical University in Austria.

Alison M. Goate, DPhil

Alison M. Goate, DPhil, Jean C. and James W. Crystal Professor and Chair of Genomics

Alison M. Goate, DPhil, is the Jean C and James W. Crystal Professor of Genomics and Chair of the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She has worked on the genetics of neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) since 1987, and is the founding director of the Ronald M. Loeb Center for Alzheimer’s Disease at Mount Sinai.

Over the last three decades, Dr. Goate has been part of many gene finding teams that have successfully identified disease-causing variants for both AD and FTD. While working at Imperial College in London, she reported the first mutation to cause familial Alzheimer’s disease, and her early studies at Washington University in St. Louis identified a genetic mutation in Colombian families that are now part of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Initiative clinical trial. Her lab was also part of the team that first reported MAPT mutations in FTD.

Dr. Goate is also a leader in the study of late onset AD genetics using integrative genomic approaches to identify novel genetic risk factors. Her work led to the identification of Trem2 as a risk factor for AD and has highlighted the enrichment of AD risk variants in microglial enhancers, regulatory elements in DNA that control gene expression in immune cells of the brain. Dr. Goate is now building upon these insights using genome editing in induced pluripotent stem cells to understand the molecular mechanisms of disease and to develop novel therapeutics.

Dr. Goate has received the Potamkin Award, the Khalid Iqbal Lifetime Achievement Award from the Alzheimer’s Association, and the MetLife Award for her research on AD. She was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012, and a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine in 2016.

Rita Z. Goldstein, PhD

Rita Z. Goldstein, PhD, Mount Sinai Professor in Neuroimaging of Addiction

Rita Z. Goldstein, PhD, is a Professor of Psychiatry with a secondary appointment in the Department of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Goldstein is Chief of the Neuropsychoimaging of Addiction and Related Conditions research group.

Nationally and internationally known for her neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies in drug addiction, Dr. Goldstein formulated a theoretical model known as Impaired Response Inhibition and Salience Attribution (iRISA). Multiple neuroimaging modalities—including MRI, EEG/ERP, PET—and neuropsychological tests are used to explore the neurobiological underpinnings of iRISA in drug addiction and related conditions. This model has drawn considerable scientific attention (exceeding 2,850 for a review published in the Am J Psychiatry in 2002 and 1,970 for another review published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience in 2011). An important application of Dr. Goldstein’s research is to facilitate the development of intervention modalities that would improve cognitive and emotional function, leading to better treatment outcomes, in drug addiction and other chronically relapsing disorders of self-regulation.

Dr. Goldstein has authored or co-authored more than 145 highly cited, peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters focusing on the role of the prefrontal cortex in drug addiction. Her research has been independently funded by several federal and private agencies, with total funding of more than $20 million as a principal or multiple investigator or program director. She became a fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in 2015, receiving the prestigious Joel Elkes Research Award in 2012 and the Jacob P. Waletzky Award in 2013.

Mentoring is a high priority for Dr. Goldstein. She has mentored numerous trainees, spanning from postdoctoral fellows to graduate, undergraduate, and high school students. Her trainees have published many first authorship manuscripts in top psychiatry and neuroscience journals, have become principal investigators on their own NIH-funded grants, and many of them are now leading independent research labs at prestigious institutions.

Dr. Goldstein earned an undergraduate degree from Tel Aviv University in Israel. She received her PhD in Health Clinical Psychology from the University of Miami after completing a yearlong internship in clinical neuropsychology at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center. She then completed her postdoctoral training on brain imaging and alcohol abuse through a fellowship from the National Institutes of Health at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Emma Guttman-Yassky, MD, PhD

Emma Guttman-Yassky, MD, PhD, Waldman Chair of Dermatology

Emma Guttman-Yassky, MD, PhD, is the Waldman Professor and System Chair of The Kimberly and Eric J. Waldman Department of Dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. A world-renowned dermatologist and physician scientist, Dr. Guttman-Yassky divides her time between a busy clinic and her laboratory that investigates the mechanisms underlying inflammatory skin diseases, leading to novel treatments for these patients.

Dr. Guttman-Yassky’s major clinical and research area of expertise is inflammatory skin diseases, with major focus on eczema/atopic dermatitis (AD) and alopecia areata, as well as other inflammatory skin diseases. She made paradigm-shifting discoveries on the immunologic basis of AD/eczema in humans, opening the door to new therapeutics. Dr. Guttman has developed the only comprehensive molecular maps of AD, defining skin differentiation and immune-circuits characterizing this disease.

Her research on atopic dermatitis/eczema has contributed to many of the recently developed treatments for this disease, earning her a unique place as one of the leaders in dermatology and immunology worldwide. She has also shown that AD is a complex disease with distinct phenotypes based on ethnicity, age, and other factors. She has shown that atopic dermatitis in Asian and African American patients is different from atopic dermatitis in European American patients, with important therapeutic implications. She is now testing (both clinically and mechanistically) multiple targeted-therapeutics for atopic dermatitis. She has recently also extended her research interest to alopecia areata in which her findings are also translated to novel therapeutic targets.

Dr. Guttman-Yassky is considered one of the world’s leading experts in inflammatory skin diseases and authored more than 250 articles and is often invited as a keynote and plenary speaker to multiple international and national meetings. She co-founded the International Eczema Council, for which she functions as immediate past president. This organization now comprises the vast majority of top experts in atopic dermatitis/eczema worldwide. She is also on the scientific advisory board of the National Eczema Association and the board of the American Skin Association. She was also elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American Dermatological Society, and she has received the Young Investigator Award from the American Academy of Dermatology, the Bettina C. Hilman, MD Lectureship and Award from the American Academy of Allergy and Immunology that honors a pioneer in allergy research whose contributions to science and medicine impacted patients’ lives, the Donald Y. M. Leung, MD, PhD-JACI Editors Lectureship and Faculty Development Award, and many other awards.

She earned her MD from Sackler at the Tel-Aviv University, and a PhD degree from the Bar-Ilan University, Israel. After her Israeli Board certification in dermatology in Israel, Dr. Guttman-Yassky moved to the U.S. for a postdoctoral fellowship at The Rockefeller University. She then became board-certified in the U.S. after a second dermatology residency training at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, MPH

Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, MPH, Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Professor of Medicine

Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, MPH, is Associate Professor of Medicine (Nephrology) with tenure at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. As an expert physician-scientist, Dr. Nadkarni bridges the gap between comprehensive clinical care and innovative research. He is the Chief of the Division of Data Driven and Digital Medicine (D3M), the Co-Chair of the Executive Management Team of the Mount Sinai Clinical Intelligence Center (MSCIC), the Clinical Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai, as well as a core faculty member in the Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine.

Before completing his medical degree at one of the top-ranked medical colleges in India, Dr. Nadkarni received training in mathematics. He then received a master’s degree in public health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and then was a research associate at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institute. Dr. Nadkarni completed his residency in internal medicine and his clinical fellowship in nephrology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He then completed a research fellowship in personalized medicine and informatics at the Charles Bronfman Institute Personalized Medicine, where he was mentored by Dr. Erwin Bottinger.

Dr. Nadkarni has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications, including articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Annals of Internal Medicine and Nature Medicine. Dr. Nadkarni is the principal or co-investigator for several grants funded by the National Institutes of Health focusing on informatics, data science, and precision medicine. He is also one of the multiple principal investigators of the NIH RECOVER consortium focusing on the long term sequelae of COVID-19. He has several patents, and is also the scientific co-founder of investor-backed companies—one of which, Renalytix, is listed on NASDAQ. In recognition of his work as an active clinician and investigator, he has received several awards and honors, including the Dr. Harold and Golden Lamport Research Award and the Deal of the Year Award from Mount Sinai Innovation Partners for his work with Renalytix.

Louis R. Pasquale, MD, FARVO

Louis R. Pasquale, MD, FARVO, Shelley and Steven Einhorn Distinguished Chair of Ophthalmology

Louis R. Pasquale, MD, FARVO, joined Mount Sinai in 2018 as Professor of Ophthalmology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Site Chair of Ophthalmology at The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Queens. Prior to joining Mount Sinai, he worked at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, for 25 years. There, he rose to the rank of Professor of Ophthalmology and Distinguished Scholar in Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School as well as Director of the Glaucoma Service at Massachusetts Eye and Ear.

With continuous support from the National Institutes of Health since 2006, Dr. Pasquale’s research has focused on the discovery of primary prevention strategies in open-angle glaucoma. His work has highlighted the role of environmental risk factors for exfoliation syndrome and the importance of nitric oxide signaling in primary open-angle glaucoma. He has also contributed to resolving the complex genetic architecture of primary open-angle glaucoma. His work is highly impactful with more than 309 publications in PubMed and an h-index of 68.

Dr. Pasquale is a member of the editorial boards of Ophthalmology Glaucoma, International Glaucoma Review, Asia-Pacific Journal of Ophthalmology, and the American Journal of Ophthalmology. He served as a member of the National Institutes of Health’s National Advisory Eye Council. He is currently the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) Glaucoma Section Trustee and a Gold Fellow of ARVO. Finally, he is a member of the American Ophthalmological Society and the Glaucoma Research Society.

Dr. Pasquale earned his medical degree at the State University of New York Stony Brook School of Medicine. He completed an internal medicine internship at Bronx Municipal Hospital, an ophthalmology residency at Temple University Hospital, and a two-year fellowship in glaucoma at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Leslee J. Shaw, PhD

Leslee J. Shaw, PhD, Mount Sinai Professor in Women’s Health Research

Leslee J. Shaw, PhD, is an internationally recognized cardiovascular outcomes researcher, with a strong focus on women’s health that encompasses quality, equity, and evaluation of cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis in women. Before joining the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2021, she directed the Dalio Institute at Weill Cornell Medical College. Prior to her time at Weill Cornell, Dr. Shaw held the R. Bruce Logue Professorship at the Emory University School of Medicine.

At Mount Sinai, Dr. Shaw holds a triple primary appointment in Medicine (Cardiology), Population Health Science and Policy, and Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science, and serves as Director of The Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute. Through this arrangement, Dr. Shaw will expand upon the Institute’s goals for interdisciplinary collaboration in women’s health, and her strong commitment to mentoring and faculty development will enhance collaboration with junior faculty within the Institute.

Dr. Shaw has published more than 760 publications and presented more than 400 abstracts in major scientific meetings in the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America. She has been ranked for more than a decade as one of the top 1 percent of clinical researchers with the most highly cited publications, awarded by Thomson Reuters. Based on her scientific contributions, Dr. Shaw received from the American College of Cardiology the Simon Dack Award for academic excellence in 2009, and, in 2013, the Coalition to Reduce Disparities in Cardiovascular Disease Outcomes Award for her studies on racial and ethnic differences in cardiovascular disease. Also in 2013, she received the Women’s Day Red Dress Award for her scientific contributions to women’s health. Recently, in 2020, Dr. Shaw was awarded the Bernadine Healy Leadership Award in Women’s Cardiovascular Disease from the American College of Cardiology, the Nanette Wenger Award from the American Society of Preventive Cardiology, and the Distinguished Investigator Award from the Academy for Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Research.

Joseph A. Sparano, MD

Joseph A. Sparano, MD, Ezra M. Greenspan, MD Professor in Clinical Cancer Care Therapeutics

Joseph A. Sparano, MD, an internationally-recognized expert in the management of breast cancer and HIV-associated malignancies, is Chief of the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology for the Mount Sinai Health System and Deputy Director of The Tisch Cancer Institute. Dr. Sparano joined Mount Sinai in 2021 following a distinguished 33-year career at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center, where he was Professor of Medicine and Obstetrics & Gynecology and Women’s Health, Associate Chairman for Clinical Research in the Department of Oncology, and Associate Director for Clinical Research at the Albert Einstein Cancer Center.

Dr. Sparano led a breakthrough clinical trial in breast cancer research, the Trial Assigning Individualized Options for Treatment, known as TAILORx—the first and largest National Cancer Institute (NCI) precision medicine trial. It integrated the 21-gene expression assay into clinical decision making for adjuvant therapy of early stage ER-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer. The trial led to changes in treatment guidelines from both the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. TAILORx results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015, 2018, and 2019. Dr. Sparano also led an effort to develop and validate a new tool integrating clinical and genomic information to guide adjuvant therapy for breast cancer which became freely available for widespread clinical use after publication in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2021. Evidence generated from another trial that he led which evaluated the role of taxane therapy in early breast cancer, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2008, has also had an important and enduring impact on standard clinical practice guidelines.

Dr. Sparano has conducted impactful studies aimed at improving the outcomes of HIV‐positive patients with cancer, including research on novel approaches for treating non‐Hodgkin lymphoma and anal cancer in individuals with HIV. He has also focused his research on improving racial disparities in cancer care and on cancer metastasis. Dr. Sparano’s research has been funded by the NCI as well as the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Susan G. Komen Foundation, and V Foundation.

Dr. Sparano is Chair and Principal Investigator of the AIDS Malignancy Consortium, a network of clinical trial sites in the U.S., Africa, and Latin America. He serves as Deputy Chair of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG)-American College of Radiology Imaging Network Cancer Research Group, and is a member of the Board of Managers of the PreECOG Research Foundation and the Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group Steering Committee. He is a recipient of some of the most prestigious awards in the field of medical oncology, including the ECOG Young Investigator Award, the Charles Moertel Award and Lecture by the Alliance for Cancer Clinical Trials, the American Association for Cancer Research William L. McGuire Award and Lecture, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology Gianni Bonadonna Award and Lecture.

Filip K. Swirski, PhD

Filip K. Swirski, PhD, Arthur and Janet C. Ross Professor of Medicine

Filip K. Swirski, PhD, is the Arthur and Janet C. Ross Professor of Medicine and Professor of Diagnostic, Molecular and Interventional Radiology as well as Director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He has secondary appointments at the Precision Immunology Institute and the BioMedical Engineering and Imaging Institute. Dr. Swirski obtained his PhD at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and postdoctoral studies at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Dr. Swirski was Professor at Harvard Medical School and Principal Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital before joining Mount Sinai in 2021.

Dr. Swirski has been recognized nationally and internationally as a leader in the field of innate immunity and inflammation in disease. He focuses on fundamental and translational cardiovascular science within the context of the hematologic, immune, metabolic, and nervous systems, with specific emphasis on cell development, communication, and function. Recently, his work has expanded to include lifestyle factors such as sleep, diet, and stress as critical modulators of cardiovascular health and hematopoiesis.

Dr. Swirski is a highly cited researcher and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Jeffrey M. Hoeg Award from the American Heart Association, the William Harvey Lecture from the European Society of Cardiology, the Martin Prize for Fundamental Research, and the Howard M. Goodman Fellowship, and he was also the Patricia and Scott Eston Research Scholar at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Swirski has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health. He holds an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, an Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association, and is the North American Coordinator of a Leducq Foundation Transatlantic Network of Excellence Consortium.

Rachel Yehuda, PhD

Rachel Yehuda, PhD, Mount Sinai Professor in Psychiatry and Neuroscience of Trauma

Rachel Yehuda, PhD, is Professor and Vice Chair of Psychiatry for Veterans Affairs, and Professor of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is also the Mental Health Director at the Bronx Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

A recognized leader in the field of traumatic stress studies, Dr. Yehuda has authored more than 500 papers and received numerous grants and awards in the field of traumatic stress and the neuroscience of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Throughout her career, her research has focused on the study of the enduring effects of trauma exposure in multiple populations such as combat veterans, Holocaust survivors, and victims of 9/11 and interpersonal violence. These studies have examined the relationship between the biological and psychological changes associated with trauma.

Dr. Yehuda’s pioneering work has resulted in an understanding of the epigenetic changes associated with trauma and PTSD, and also molecular alterations in association with intergenerational trauma. Dr. Yehuda’s laboratory has investigated novel treatment approaches for PTSD and the biological factors that may contribute to differing treatment outcomes for the purpose of developing personalized medicine strategies for treatment matching in PTSD. This work has resulted in an approved U.S. patent for a PTSD blood test. Her laboratory is also using advances in stem cell technology to examine PTSD gene expression networks in induced neurons. Most recently, Dr. Yehuda established the Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research at Mount Sinai, which integrates sophisticated brain imaging and molecular neuroscience in PTSD with clinical trials using psilocybin and MDMA-assisted psychotherapy and other related medicines.

Bin Zhang, PhD

Bin Zhang, PhD, Willard T.C. Johnson Research Professor of Neurogenetics

Bin Zhang, PhD, is a Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and the Director of the Center for Transformative Disease Modeling at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Prior to joining Mount Sinai, Dr. Zhang worked as a Principal Scientist and Group Leader of Network Biology at Sage Bionetworks, a non-profit research organization started that grew out of Rosetta Inpharmatics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Merck & Co. Dr. Zhang earned his PhD and a master’s degree in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo, a master’s degree in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Tongji University, Shanghai, China.

Dr. Zhang’s extensive experience in electrical engineering and computer science empowers him to build highly predictive models for very complex data from handwritten document images to large-scale disease multi-Omics data. His expertise lies in data mining, pattern recognition, and systems biology. Over the past decade, Dr. Zhang has developed a series of influential gene network inference algorithms which have been extensively used for identification of novel pathways and gene targets, as well as development of drugs for human diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, obesity, and diabetes.

Dr. Zhang is leading the effort of integrative multiscale network biology modeling of large-scale multi-Omics data in complex human diseases including cancer, diabetes, depression, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, influenza and Zika infection, and COVID-19, as well as pollution-induced asthma. Building upon highly robust and predictive mechanistic network models underlying these diseases, he is developing novel therapeutics for these illnesses using the state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches.

A prolific researcher, Dr. Zhang has published 190 papers including a number of high profile papers in Nature, Science, Cell, and Nature Genetics. His research on cancer established the first set of data driven predictive gene network models and driver genes of molecular alterations in breast cancer, primary melanoma, and gastric cancer. Such effort has been extended to more than 30 cancer types. His research on the genetic networks and regulators of Parkinson’s disease opens up a new avenue for studying the disease. His research that uncovered an immune/microglia gene network causally linked to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) was published in Cell in 2013 and selected by the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease as one of the top 50 most influential papers on AD published from 2013 to 2017. His subsequent research in this direction further systematically identified molecular signatures underlying selective regional vulnerability to AD and reconstructed neuronal gene subnetworks dysregulated in AD. More importantly, he recently uncovered three major molecular subtypes of AD, which are independent of age and disease stage. Novel compounds are being developed for targeting the network models and key drivers of AD. These studies led by Dr. Zhang provide a foundation for determining more effective biomarkers for early prediction of AD, studying causal mechanisms of AD, developing next generation therapeutics for AD, and designing more effective and targeted clinical trials, ultimately leading to precision medicine for AD.

Higher Risk of Autism Found in Babies Born Prematurely According to a Definitive New Mount Sinai Study

Sep 21, 2021 | Featured, Psychiatry, Research

Premature birth is linked to an increased risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in both males and females, with those born earliest carrying the highest risk, according to a large and definitive new study in Pediatrics from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. ASD, a disability associated with social, behavioral, and communication challenges, affects nearly one in 54 children in the United States.

The research found that children born between 22 and 27 weeks gestation had nearly four times the risk of developing ASD than children born full-term, between 39 and 41 weeks. Even babies born early-term—at 37 to 38 weeks—carried a 10 percent to 15 percent higher risk of ASD when compared to full-term births.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most children are diagnosed with ASD after the age of four, and boys are more likely to be diagnosed than girls. But an important takeaway from the Mount Sinai study is the need for parents and pediatricians to carefully monitor all premature babies, says the study’s lead author, Casey Crump, MD, PhD, Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, and Professor of Epidemiology, Department of Population Health Science and Policy, Icahn Mount Sinai.

Casey Crump, MD, PhD

“Both preterm and early-term births should now be recognized as independent risk factors for autism in both males and females,” say Dr. Crump. “Children born prematurely need early evaluation and long-term follow-up to facilitate early detection and treatment of autism. Hopefully, our findings will help raise awareness of that.”

Dr. Crump and researchers at Lund University in Sweden examined the population records of more than 4 million Swedish individuals across a 30-year period and found the prevalence of ASD was directly related to gestational age. While the risk of ASD in children born between 37 and 38 weeks gestation is relatively modest, he says, the high numbers of children born during that gestational window make it notable.

In reaching their conclusions, the researchers compared siblings within families and were able to control for genetic and environmental factors, which strengthened the link between prematurity and ASD. The researchers also paid attention to these patterns in premature females, a group that had not been studied as extensively as males.

According to Dr. Crump, the study is meant to raise awareness but not alarm parents of premature babies. “Most of these children do very well across their lifespans,” he says.

Yet, “Preterm birth can interrupt or delay the development of all organ systems, such as the cardiovascular system and kidneys, as well as the neurological system,” he adds. For example, the weight of the human brain increases by nearly one-third between 34 and 40 weeks gestation, with significant increases in the volume of white and grey matter. Additional research has shown that the preterm brain is exposed to an inflammatory environment, which could result in a cascade of neuronal injury and alterations that occur prior to birth.

“Parents of children born preterm should be extra careful that their children have close clinical follow-up with physicians who are aware of these issues and can refer them to specialists,” says Dr. Crump. “Earlier detection leads to earlier treatments, which can improve outcomes. Gestational age at birth should certainly be tracked in the medical records to facilitate identification of these people across their life course.”

Three Simple Ways to Help Lower Your Anxiety

Sep 15, 2021 | Mental Health, Psychiatry, Your Health

Young man practices deep breathing to lower anxiety

Everyone feels anxious now and then. Sometimes it’s a particular situation that makes your stomach clench, like visiting the doctor or meeting someone you don’t know; other times, you may experience a wave of anxiety for no particular reason.

There are some simple steps you can follow to relax. Rachel Kaplan, LCSW, a clinical social worker at The Mount Sinai Hospital, shares three tools you can use anywhere—without signaling your distress to everyone around you.

Breathe mindfully

You’ve probably heard that breathing can help you relax. But mindful breathing is more than just holding your breath.

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness involves being aware of the moment and not judging yourself. Just notice how you feel and allow yourself to feel that way. Try not to force yourself to be relaxed as that can backfire and make you feel more stressed. You want to remind your body that you are safe

When you’re anxious, you tend to take shallow breaths. This is part of our ‘fight or fight’ response that kicks in when our brains sense a threat. To counteract this and help relax the body, try a technique called belly—or diaphragmatic—breathing. Start by placing one hand on your chest and one on the lower stomach area. Take a deep breath, inhaling through your nose, for four counts. Hold your breath for three counts. Then exhale slowly, through your mouth, for six counts. Deep breathing helps to ground us and signals to our brains that we are safe, lowering our anxiety level.

As you breathe, watch to see which hand is rising and falling—you’ll want it to be the hand on the belly. Take another deep breath and imagine that you’re pushing air into that lower hand. Repeat this exercise 10 times.

Focus on your senses

Use all your senses to focus on small details of the here. This will help you ground yourself and will take your mind off your anxious thoughts.

Think about the small details of your surroundings:

Start by naming five things you see around you. This could be the table you’re sitting at or your water bottle.
Name four things you can touch: your sweatshirt, hair, necklace, or shoes.
Acknowledge three things you hear, such as a car horn honking outside or the click-click of someone typing.
Name two things you can smell, maybe the remnants of last night’s dinner or your cat’s litter box.
Finally, acknowledge one thing you can taste.

By focusing on the exercise, you don’t have enough brain power to analyze and worry. Your concerns drift away, and you feel calmer.

Use your peripheral vision

This isn’t easy and requires concentration.

Start by looking straight ahead (not on a phone or computer screen) and pick one spot to stare at. It can be a mark on the wall, a doorknob, a tree branch—whatever jumps out at you. Focus your gaze on that spot for 5 to 10 seconds. Keep that focus, then widen your field of view without looking away from your focal point.

Notice what you see in your peripheral vision. Start on the right side and observe what you can see without moving your head or straying from your focal point. You may just see colors and movement or you may see objects. Do this for about 10 seconds. Then, for about 10 seconds, notice what you see on the left without looking away from your focal point.

By focusing on your peripheral vision, rather than your anxiety, your breathing will slow and your face muscles will relax. When you feel calmer, you can bring your attention back to the view straight in front of you.

Twenty Years Later: A Grim Anniversary as Mount Sinai Remains a Lifeline for 9/11 Responders

Sep 8, 2021 | Community, Featured, Psychiatry

On the evening of Tuesday, September 11, 2001—with fires burning at the site of where the twin towers had stood that morning and several thousand people still unaccounted for—a group of physicians from the Mount Sinai Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health met to discuss a plan of action for treating survivors and first responders who had rushed in to help.

Protégés of the late Irving Selikoff, MD—a pioneering researcher who was the first to definitively link asbestos exposure to lung cancer—these physicians knew how dangerous the air was at the site of the attack, which had been reduced to 1.8 million tons of burning rubble. The toxic stew of chemicals would later be found to include major hazards to human health, such as lead and other heavy metals, benzene, dioxin, and asbestos. The physicians also knew that serious illnesses could develop decades after an individual’s initial exposure, lessons they had learned from Dr. Selikoff and his groundbreaking research in the 1960s.

Over the course of their first meeting and several subsequent ones that included colleagues such as David Prezant, MD, Chief Medical Officer of the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY), the Mount Sinai physicians established a blueprint for what is now the World Trade Center (WTC) Health Program.

Today, 20 years later, the WTC program continues to receive new patients. It consists of six New York City-area medical centers, including Mount Sinai, and a separate treatment center exclusively for FDNY members. Together, the centers treat more than 80,000 emergency responders—firefighters, police, recovery and cleanup workers—as well as 30,000 people who worked, lived, or went to school near the disaster zone in lower Manhattan. Their medical care will be funded through 2090, under the federal James Zadrogra 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which was signed into law in 2011.

“The Selikoff Centers had exceptional doctors and they worked their fingers to the bone getting this program off the ground,” says Michael Crane, MD, MPH, who joined Mount Sinai in 2006 as Director of the World Trade Center Health Program Clinical Center at Mount Sinai. “Their incredible dedication got this going. It was hardscrabble, making phone calls and asking people to speak out about the program. They were helped by community and civic leaders and members of Congress who got behind this. Their story is really an inspiration.”

Dr. Crane, whose program at Mount Sinai cares for roughly 23,000 responders, was medical director of Con Edison’s health program on 9/11. Immediately following the attacks, he was down at the site making sure Con Edison’s recovery workers had proper masks and breathing protection. But that was not the case for many other responders. The filters on their masks clogged up after an hour and workers were either too busy to replace them or could not find extra masks.

Sandra Lowe, MD, talks about what we’ve learned about trauma and resilience from treating responders. Her answers have implications for COVID-19 and beyond. Dr. Lowe is Medical Director at the World Trade Center Mental Health Program Clinical Center of Excellence at Mount Sinai.

“You’d see the masks hanging off their faces,” says Dr. Crane. “They were running in to save people’s lives. They ran in without appropriate equipment and suffered the consequences.”

The dedication of the recovery workers was inspiring, says Dr. Crane. “So many of them had friends or relatives or people they knew or had trained with down there. Guys who ran down there had built the towers. So it was a tremendous emotional shock. They were energized by this passion to do something about it. So many of them said the same thing: ‘It’s family. I want to find them.’ It was deep and personal and real.”

Michael Crane, MD, MPH, left, and Julia Nicolaou Burns, Administrative Director, Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health

On 9/11, Craig L. Katz, MD, was the newly appointed Director of The Mount Sinai Hospital’s Psychiatry Emergency Room. But it was his leadership of the nonprofit organization, Disaster Psychiatry Outreach, which he had founded during his medical residency, which led to his direct involvement with the families of the victims, survivors, and responders. Almost immediately, Dr. Katz helped organize volunteer psychiatrists who met informally with these groups down at Ground Zero or at the Family Assistance Center that New York City had established downtown.

At the time, lung screenings for responders were being funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), but no federal funding had been allocated for mental health. Yet the psychological effects of the troubling rescue and recovery mission were beginning to show.

A few months after the attacks, Dr. Katz says Mount Sinai’s Psychiatry Department received a phone call from the late Stephen Levin, MD, then Medical Director of the Mount Sinai Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health, who said, “ ‘I have all these rescue and recovery workers coming into my office and they’re crying. I don’t know what to do with them. I’m looking at lung exposures and they’re crying.’”

Craig L. Katz, MD

Looking to assist the workers, Dr. Katz, currently a Clinical Professor in the departments of Psychiatry, Medical Education, and System Design and Global Health, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, wrote a three-page grant proposal to the private Robin Hood Foundation requesting funding for mental health. “That was the birth of the mental health program for recovery workers,” he says.

The Robin Hood Foundation would go on to provide the program with more than $6 million until 2011, when the Zadroga Bill was enacted, according to Dr. Katz. “Robin Hood typically funds underserved populations,” he says. “They agreed the rescue and recovery workers were an underserved population. They were largely men who don’t readily seek help for mental health issues. These blue collar guys were not our usual customers.”

Today, Mount Sinai’s World Trade Center (WTC) Mental Health Program actively treats close to 700 individuals under the leadership of Sandra M. Lowe, MD, Medical Director. “The people involved in the recovery and restoration operations were exposed to so much trauma,” says Dr. Lowe. “Some individuals developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depressive disorder, all kinds of anxiety disorders, and some developed substance misuse problems because that was one of the ways they tried to manage the symptoms they had.”

These mental health conditions, combined with the aero-digestive disorders, lymphoma, or lung cancer, which also stem from their work at Ground Zero, have created a complicated set of issues for this aging cohort of responders, many of whom are now in their 50s.

Sandra M. Lowe, MD

“Some members of the public may question the relevance of the WTC Health Center 20 years later,” says Dr. Lowe. “It is very relevant and needed. People are not aware of the ongoing physical or psychological struggles. We see an increased number of patients coming in for help. They have developed worsening physical conditions or now they’re retiring from the New York City Police Department. They may have been suffering PTSD for 20 years, but now they’re no longer afraid of the stigma associated with seeking help. They’ll say, ‘Doc, this is the first time I’ve told anyone about my nightmares.’ We hear the appreciation from the patients and their families.”

As time goes on, Mount Sinai’s clinical team also sees new health issues arising among responders, including the possibility of early cognitive decline. NIOSH is funding studies to determine whether exposure to toxins at Ground Zero is actually associated with this decline and whether there is a need for an early intervention program.

Kathryn Marrone, LCSW, Director of Social Work for the World Trade Center Mental Health Program, joined Mount Sinai in the summer of 2002 for what she was told at the time would be a one-year job monitoring and assessing the needs of responders. Almost two decades later, she is still working with these men and women. Only now, she says, they are aging and require a shift in services.

The responders “recovered bodies, saw people jumping from buildings, and watched the buildings collapse,” she says. “The level of trauma these individuals experienced was quite severe. They were completely confused about how to manage that emotionally.” But over the years, in their dealings with social workers, doctors, and other colleagues in the program, “Mount Sinai has become a lifeline for so many individuals. It is a place where they can turn because no one else quite gets what they’re experiencing.”

My Child Is Anxious About Returning to School In Person. How Can I Help Them?

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Children's Health, COVID-19, Mental Health, Psychiatry, Your Health

With the start of the new school year, many kids may be relieved to return to in-person learning. But others may feel more anxious.

In fact, experts at the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center anticipate that this transition may be especially challenging and anxiety-provoking.

Rachel Colon, LCSW, a social worker at the Center who treats young people ages 10-26, says that her case load has nearly doubled as adolescents seek help for anxiety and depression.

Rachel Colon, LCSW

“Young people are feeling a great deal of anxiety about returning to school,” she says. “They don’t know what they’re stepping into, who their friends are, and they’re nervous about the lack of predictability in an environment that has always been safe and provided routine.”

Ms. Colon offers some steps you can use to help your kids with the transition to in-person learning this school year:

Have lots of conversations with your kids; keep the lines of communication open.
Empathize with your children; let them know they are not alone if they feel anxious.
Reach out to your child’s school to ask what steps are being taken to familiarize students with their surroundings.
Look for signs of withdrawal, isolation, stomach aches, headaches, irritability. These can be signs of depression and/or anxiety.
If your child is headed to a new campus, or stepping up from middle school to high school, offer to take a walk to school before the first day of school.

Heading back to school can be stressful even in normal times. Over the years, the Mount Sinai Adolescent Heath Center has compiled a list of seven things for kids and adults to do to start the year off right. Click here to see them on the Center’s kid friendly blog.

One potential new issue this year is that kids may feel they have lost touch with their group of friends, or that they don’t belong, and masks, while a critical safety tool, may make things more difficult.

“Many kids are telling me they don’t have a friend group anymore. They don’t know how their classmates will look,” she says. “With the potential requirement of masks, this will likely compound social anxiety because it’s hard to read expressions when a person is masked. Are they happy or sad? Are they smiling at me? Though masks are a crucial safety tool right now, kids really need simple cues—like a broad smile—to maintain social relationships.”

The Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center is a comprehensive, integrated health center that provides nonjudgmental and confidential care to young people ages 10-26 in New York City—all at no cost to patients, regardless of insurance or immigration status.

Learn more about the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center

Check out seven back-to-school tips from the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center

Brian Sweis, MD, PhD: A Physician-Scientist’s Approach to Psychiatry

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Inside Mount Sinai Psychiatry, Psychiatry

Brian Sweis, MD, PhD, logging his clinical rounds notes while keeping an eye on the mice in his latest experiment.

The past few decades have seen a surge in neuroscience breakthroughs, but translating those findings into better outcomes for patients has been slow and, in some cases, non-existent. Neuroscientists who train as clinicians can narrow that interdisciplinary divide.

Brian Sweis, MD, PhD, a second-year psychiatry resident and post-doctoral researcher at The Mount Sinai Hospital, is learning that discoveries in the lab can help inform how psychiatrists conceptualize the biology underlying complex emotions. In his most recent experiments, he investigated where in the brain emotions like regret stem from, and how this could go awry in mood disorders.

“We learned that there may be two distinct types of regret in the brain: one linked to depression, and another linked to resilience, which differ based on how people view their own mistakes and what could have been done differently,” he said. “I realized that we may even be able to access the root of some of these seemingly similar but fundamentally distinct thought processes if we structure psychiatric interviews with patients more precisely. This could help us identify which type of regret a patient is experiencing—either an emotion that is healthy and adaptive (and should be reinforced) versus one that may be pathological (and targeted for treatment).”

Dr. Sweis anticipates that as he continues to grow as a budding psychiatrist, the connections between his research and clinical experience will help him better bridge the worlds of science and medicine.

An indirect path to psychiatry
Dr. Sweis was first introduced to neuroscience as an undergraduate at Loyola University in Chicago, where he worked in a research lab studying how stress can affect the body and brain in rodents. At the same time, he was drawn to a psychology professor who was studying similar concepts in humans. He realized that neuroscience lay at the intersection of the two. “I fell in love with neuroscience when I learned that something as intangible and abstract as a psychological concept could have concrete biological underpinnings,” he said.

He decided to double major in psychology and biology, and minored in neuroscience and philosophy. “I was a total nerd about everything neuroscience,” he said. “I remember thinking at one point that I definitely didn’t want to go to medical school. Instead, I wanted to be a professor, run a research lab, train my own students, and be a full-time scientist.”

He was most interested in areas of science where multiple fields overlapped. “That’s where the most exciting innovation happens,” he said. Towards the end of college, he learned he could pursue his research passions while in medical school and work at the intersection of two often separated career paths as a physician-scientist.

Dr. Sweis enrolled in the dual degree MD-PhD program at the University of Minnesota Medical School (UMN), which splits the four years of medical school and adds a four-year PhD program in the middle. For his PhD in neuroscience, he explored the complex cognitive processes around how the brain makes decisions. “I was fascinated by how we could take abstract concepts like thought, memories, and imagination, and boil them down to the physical properties of a brain cell that you can touch and directly measure,” he said.

Most of the breakthroughs in basic neurobiology occur in animal studies because the technologies available in that space are more advanced, but this is often far removed from affecting patient care. However, Dr. Sweis set out to work across species with rodent and human subjects in parallel in order to accelerate the “bench to bedside” process of translational research.

At UMN, Dr. Sweis was part of the first group of researchers to discover that humans are not the only species that are capable of experiencing regret. Combining elements from decision neuroscience with behavioral economics, he found that even rodents are sensitive to the mistakes they’ve made when realizing that alternative actions could have led to better outcomes. He also found that avoiding future regret can be a strong motivator for learning—mice will even sacrifice food to do so.

Related to this work, Dr. Sweis was first author on a Science paper showing that rodents also tend to overvalue rewards they’ve already invested in, even when it’s clear they should cut their losses. This well-studied cognitive bias is known as the sunk cost fallacy, and it was thought to be a psychological phenomenon unique to humans. Importantly, Dr. Sweis helped craft a way to study these concepts so that they could translate to animal models of psychiatric disorders. His work in comparative biology and evolutionary neuroeconomics landed him on the 2020 Forbes 30 Under 30: Science list. He has also received best PhD awards through UMN, nationally through the Council of Graduate Studies, and internationally through the Society for Neuroscience.

As a clinician, Dr. Sweis originally planned to train in neurology. But over the course of his PhD, he learned that the applications of what he was studying aligned more with the depth of training he could gain from a residency program in psychiatry.

“I realized psychiatry was more in line with the questions I found to be the most fascinating, and tied back to my philosophy interests in undergrad,” he said. “How does the mind work? Where does motivation come from? What happens when the machinery in our brain that controls the way we make decisions starts to physically break down? Whether it’s the result of a neurological insult like a stroke or psychiatric event like trauma, I wanted to know more about the biology that causes us to behave and think the way we do. To fully unpack all of the ways a clinician can deconstruct the origins of behavior, I knew I needed to be formally trained as a psychiatrist.”

Mount Sinai’s physician-scientist residency track
Dr. Sweis chose The Mount Sinai Hospital because “the institution as a whole values research at every level, not just a certain department or an individual or two,” he said. “Mount Sinai was built around accelerating and providing robust training experiences and research opportunities, and that’s one of its biggest strengths toward innovating new treatments for patients.”

The Mount Sinai Hospital was also a good fit because the training directors, Antonia New, MD, Asher Simon, MD, and Mercedes Perez-Rodriguez, MD, PhD, wanted to accelerate his research momentum concurrent with his clinical training as a physician.

“They readily identified that my talents lie with being a scientist,” he said. “They told me they would do everything they could to powerfully launch my career as a physician-scientist because that’s where I would thrive the most.”

To that end, during his first year of residency, he split his time as an intern seeing patients (including in the ICU and ER during the height of COVID-19), and the other half initiating experiments on how regret-related processes in the brain are altered in depression.

“I began working on this experiment the first day I moved to New York,” he said. “My training directors saw the clear path forward, entrusted my vision and drive, and supported me in every way. We’re working to publish these discoveries right now.” Within the first six months of residency, Dr. Sweis was awarded third place for best research by a psychiatry resident in New York City by the American Psychiatric Association.

Finally, Dr. Sweis chose The Mount Sinai Hospital because of the faculty he wanted to work with, including Eric Nestler, MD, PhD, Scott Russo, PhD, and Denise Cai, PhD. Dr. Sweis launched his first set of experiments in Dr. Nestler’s and Dr. Russo’s labs studying how regret may be processed differently in rodents that develop depressive-like symptoms following exposure to stress (stress-susceptible individuals) versus animals that are more stress-resilient.

“Dr. Nestler and his colleagues provided a home for me to continue my research from UMN in an independent manner,” he said. “The opportunity for collaboration was obvious: I took a well-validated model of depression their labs and others developed, and combined it with my expertise in neuroeconomics, which was quite new to their labs.”

Now that he completed his first set of experiments and has hit the ground running, Dr. Sweis is expanding his research horizon and learning from other expert faculty including Dr. Cai, a leader in the field of memory research. Dr. Cai’s lab leverages cutting-edge technology that she and others developed to image the living brain in ways never before possible in order to ask deeper questions about how experiences are dynamically processed and stored.

The microscope and raw footage of a rodent’s brain. Image credit: Daniel Aharoni, PhD, and Denise Cai, PhD.

Her group developed a miniature microscope the size of a penny that can be implanted into a rodent’s brain. The microscope can record videos of individual neurons that together look like stars in the night sky, where each flickering light represents a biological event. This electrical cellular activity is engineered to be converted into a visual signal that can be captured with a camera. Hidden in this display are coordinated “constellation-like” patterns that together represent aspects of a memory distributed across a network of neurons.

“This type of work is truly incredible,” said Dr. Sweis. “Information represented this way in the brain—in networks—would have previously otherwise gone unseen without this technology. Identifying new ways in which these complex processes break down is only the beginning toward developing a richer understanding of psychiatric illnesses.” Dr. Sweis and Dr. Cai together recently published a review article on the current state of this research and where these new technologies are taking the field.

Career plans
A fundamental issue in brain research is that animal work and human work can be very disconnected, but Dr. Sweis plans to keep a foot in both worlds. He sees his translational research ultimately extending back into clinical patient populations, where he has aligned interests with another mentor: Helen Mayberg, MD, director of the Nash Family Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics. As a neurologist who works in neurosurgery to advance next-generation treatments for psychiatric disorders through deep brain stimulation, she emulates the type of neuroengineering approach to psychiatry Dr. Sweis is aiming to grow further into with his research and clinical background. While certain techniques and questions can only be investigated in mice, he hopes some of the insights he gains by studying animal behavior in complex ways can bring a different spin or new elements to questions being asked on the human side (such as Dr. Mayberg’s research).

For example, deep brain stimulation doesn’t work for every depressed patient. “Why is that? Is the implanted device slightly missing the intended target? Or does this person have a fundamentally distinct sub-type of depression in which treatments would be better tailored toward a different pathway in the brain?” said Dr. Sweis. “One of the primary goals of my translational research is to be able to differentiate sub-types of a psychiatric disease by refining the way in which we understand how behaviors come about in the first place—and to be better at describing those processes.”

Scientists trained as physicians, like Dr. Sweis, are in a unique position to understand and enhance the links between preclinical research and clinical applications in humans to advance patient treatments. “During my residency interview, my program directors told me that the toolkit of a psychiatrist lies in the interview,” he said. “It’s a surgical interview—much like a scalpel is to a surgeon, so is the art of interviewing a patient to a psychiatrist.”

He hopes that his research in neuroeconomics will equip psychiatrists with a new language to dissect the multifaceted drivers of behavior and sharpen the precision of a surgical interview such that it can tap into the different circuits at play. This is one of the goals of the emerging field of computational psychiatry, and he knows his training as a clinician is making all the difference as he moves toward that goal.

“By learning how to practice psychiatry and working directly with patients, I can begin to identify what needs to change the most in this field and where to best direct my efforts as a neuroscientist,” he said.

Mount Sinai’s Department of Psychiatry is one of the largest and most prolific in the world. With our new series, Inside Mount Sinai Psychiatry, we showcase stories from every corner of our Department including our training programs, patient care teams, and scientists. We believe psychiatry and mental health are the building blocks to fulfilling lives and thriving societies; via these stories about our faculty, trainees, and staff, this series shows the myriad ways we work toward that. Whether it’s manning the front desk of an opioid treatment clinic, researching how psychedelics work in the brain, or training future clinician-scientists, our team is relentlessly pursuing the best for those suffering from mental health issues.