Updated on Jul 8, 2022 | Alumni, Community, School
Annette Stauber Cohn, RN, will be 100 years old on Saturday, July 9, 2022. Ms. Cohn enrolled in the former Beth Israel Hospital School of Nursing (now Phillips School of Nursing at Mount Sinai Beth Israel) in 1940. At that time, it was a three-year diploma program.
Back then, the nursing students resided on two floors of the hospital. As at other nursing schools of the time, students conformed to strict standards of behavior, dress, and health habits. A housemother made rounds every night at 10 pm. A dress inspection was conducted weekly, and the students were weighed to make sure they did not “get too heavy” since it was perceived as a professional necessity that nurses possess the required stamina and “look well.” The uniforms were green. Because World War II was on, there were no silk stockings, rayon was too expensive, and nylon was being used for parachutes, which left black cotton hose. By the end of the day their feet would be purple.
All the instruction was provided by the physicians and nurses at the hospital. Students worked 12-hour shifts six days a week on the hospital wards, and attended classes in between their other duties. In return, they were given housing, uniforms, and books and were paid a small monthly allowance.
Although times were different and certainly much stricter, Ms. Cohn fondly recalls her time in New York City, first as a student and later as a registered nurse. On weekends, she would visit museums, galleries, and flower markets, and attend free concerts. An avid lover of the arts, she once took a group of nursing students to the opera, where they bought standing-room tickets.
She began her nursing career at Beth Israel Hospital when she was asked to work directly for the hospital and nursing school director, Dorothea Daniels. This was quite a testament to Ms. Cohn’s skills, since Ms. Daniels had a reputation as “a woman to be reckoned with.” Her first assignment was to review nursing applications and later she taught at the nursing school.
It was at Beth Israel Hospital that Ms. Cohn met the love of her life, Perry David Cohn, MD, who completed his residency and internship in pediatrics at the hospital. They were engaged when World War II broke out; Dr. Cohn was drafted and served his country as a physician. He finished his tour with an honorable discharge, but then received orders to return and was stationed in Georgia. These events kept delaying their marriage and so they decided to have a small wedding in New York City and then move to Georgia together. Eventually they made their way back up North to New Jersey where they later built a house in Passaic.
Like most physicians back then, her husband operated his practice out of their home. During those early years, Ms. Cohn was for the most part a homemaker with three children, but she also worked as a nurse alongside her husband when it was very busy. When the children were older, she returned to nursing practice full-time. Over the years her family grew to include three children, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
Upon retirement, she and her husband enjoyed traveling and New York theatre, opera, and ballets. Ms. Cohn always had an eye for art and she enjoyed taking lessons in sculpture and art (paintings and pastels), along with gardening, knitting, and needlepoint, and, of course, spending time with her family and friends.
Fond memories of her time in nursing school and living in New York City led Ms. Cohn to write a memoir (“Out of Time and Place”) about those early days. Recognizing how important the school was to Ms. Cohn, for her 85th birthday her children established a graduation award in her name. Ms. Cohn was delighted to attend the pinning and graduation ceremonies annually and have the opportunity to share some of her experiences with the students and personally congratulate the recipients of her honorary award.
When asked what the secret to such a long life is, she did not hesitate to say, “Having a wonderful husband, fantastic children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and the support of my friends and exceptional health care providers.”
Updated on Jul 8, 2022 | School
Students graduating with a Master of Public Health (MPH) typically have not completed medical school—but Varsha Venu, MBBS, is no ordinary student. Before enrolling in the Master’s program at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Dr. Venu had already received her MBBS degree at Kasturba Medical College in Mangalore, India. As part of her internship training, she practiced community health—and it was during that time she found her true passion.
“I recognized the importance of public health when I realized that patients were coming in with diseases that could have been easily prevented if the health of the community was improved,” Dr. Venu says. “Without good public health, the entire community suffers, and that is probably the biggest reason why I chose not to become a practicing doctor, but instead to take on roles that would ensure that I could give the best care to an entire community and not just individual patients. Public health enables me to contribute to society in a more holistic way.”
As part of her MPH training, Ms. Venu did a part-time internship at the North HELP Coalition, a Mount Sinai program dedicated to improving emergency preparedness of medically vulnerable populations and their health care providers. She focused much of her attention on dialysis, an area that is close to her heart since her grandfather passed away from kidney disease without adequate access to dialysis in India.
Outpatient dialysis providers everywhere face unique challenges during natural disasters and, most recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ms. Venu worked with the Coalition to provide preparedness training, tools, and advocacy efforts, which grew into her capstone project.
Throughout her two years in the Mount Sinai program, Ms. Venu also served as a teaching assistant (TA) for three courses, which she found invaluable to her training. “Being a TA is a very good way of interacting with your peers while also working with some of the best professors and directors in the field,” she says.
Ms. Venu, who was born in India and raised in Dubai, plans to stay in the United States after graduation to build on the knowledge she gained here. “I want to contribute to this society in an even greater way,” she says. Her goal after graduation is to combine her passions for public health policy and health care management.
“I want to take on a role that enables me to assure that hospitals are giving the best care to the entire community, while at the same time, ensuring that the entire team of doctors, nurses, and ancillary staff, are all well looked after,” she says.
Updated on Jul 8, 2022 | School
Trisha Tagle’s connection to Mount Sinai goes back 10 years when, as an undergrad pharmacy student, she was a pharmacy apprentice at The Mount Sinai Hospital. Soon, however, she would change course, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Health Care Administration/Management, having internships at two hospitals—and discovering that she could effect greater change in health care as an administrator.
Ms. Tagle returned to Mount Sinai as a project coordinator, and in 2018, took a new position as a project manager in the Department of Neurology, where she currently works. It was then that she realized that she could rise to even greater heights with a Master of Health Administration (MHA) degree.
“When I transitioned from a clinical role to health care administration, I realized I had the opportunity to bring about change to health care operations in a way that was more inclusive and holistic for everyone,” she says.
Ms. Tagle, who received her MHA from the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in June 2022, recalls the strengths of the program. “There was a lot of emphasis on the use of process improvement, project management skills, and technology to effect change in health care delivery, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and especially for patients lacking access to health care,” she says. “One of my project proposals focused on how to make health care technology more inclusive. Not every patient has a smartphone, for example. So how can we give more patients access, to make sure they don’t fall through the cracks? I’m a very process-oriented person, so the idea of making sure we capture everyone is very important to me.”
As a project manager, Ms. Tagle is exposed to many different areas of the Health System, and she sees things on the macro level as well as the department level. “I’m able to not only work on a particular project, but I can help make the Neurology department more efficient, and the more efficient it is, the better and more efficient care we can offer our patients,” she says. “Now with my master’s, I hope to implement change and also come up with ideas that will help to move health care forward. I find that very exciting.”
With her new degree, Ms. Tagle will soon be taking on an intern from the MHA program. “As an alum and someone who’s also already in the field, I have been asked to join Mount Sinai’s MHA mentors program. This is an additional way for me to give back and try to help students navigate the program and their careers in health care administration,” she says. “I have always loved connecting with others and sharing my experiences in a way that may help guide them to their own discovery of where they’d like to go in health care.”
Updated on Jul 8, 2022 | School
One of the memorable things for Thomas Dolan about his pursuit of a Master of Science degree in Biostatistics is how passionate the faculty members are. “Their passion for biostats stands out, and it really showed in their coursework and even in conversations about their field,” he says.
That was an important aspect of his experience with the program offered at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, as was the considerable support from faculty members who are biostatisticians who partnered with students on their capstone projects. For his capstone project, Mr. Dolan compared changes in the genetic expression in older and younger individuals after receiving the influenza vaccine. He found that younger people had more distinct changes. Although there is still much to be learned about how the immune system functions, his findings aligned with the notion that as people age, they tend to have greater inflammation, which often results in an immune system that is not as responsive as it is in younger people.
“We actually worked with real data on actual projects,” Mr. Dolan says. “The great thing about Mount Sinai is that students have access to all these unique resources.” These include the Center for Biostatistics, the Biomedical Data Science Initiative, the International Center for Health Outcomes and Innovation Research, the Institute for Health Care Delivery Science, the Institute for Health Equity Research, and the Institute for Translational Epidemiology.
His own growing passion for biostatistics and the skills he learned and refined at Mount Sinai have led him to a position as a research analyst for the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit, scientific, and educational organization that administers the only organ procurement and transplantation network in the United States, where he will be analyzing survival statistics among organ recipients. “The most exciting thing for me is that this new job is another opportunity to keep learning, and it’s going to be really interesting,” Mr. Dolan says.
Updated on Jul 8, 2022 | School
When Olivia Cullen graduated from college, she had two career goals: to become a physician and to perform impactful clinical research. Believing she was not ready to apply to medical school, she instead decided to pursue a Master of Science in Clinical Research (MSCR) degree at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
“For me, the MSCR program was an opportunity to understand the inner workings of clinical research to discover what interested me most,” Ms. Cullen says. “Ultimately, I fell in love with data science research, and now I’m about to begin an MD/PhD program at Mount Sinai with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies in Medicine.” The Graduate School is launching this new concentration in Fall 2022, and Ms. Cullen is in the first cohort of students.
Under the leadership of renowned physician-scientist Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, MPH, Ms. Cullen classified data collected from electrocardiograms (ECG) in the Augmented Intelligence in Medicine and Science Laboratory (AIMS), which is part of the Mount Sinai Clinical Intelligence Center (MSCIC). Among her accomplishments was the creation of an algorithm to help identify patients with a rare heart condition known as hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis (haTTR). She worked closely with Dr. Nadkarni, who is Co-Director of the MSCIC and Clinical Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai, and with Akhil Vaid, MD, who is a postdoctoral scholar in Dr. Nadkarni’s lab.
“My ultimate goal as a researcher is to use the vast amount of health care data we have been accumulating to better the lives of patients,” she says. “Specifically, I am fascinated by the applications of computer vision in the field of health care, and I want to improve analysis of medical imaging.”
Although Ms. Cullen completed her degree remotely from her home in New Jersey, she remained very close to the Mount Sinai community. “The connection I made with my advisors completely changed the course of my career,” she says. “They helped me get my foot in the door with data science research, and then they really advocated for me, helped me take the next steps in my career, and even helped me with my medical school applications.”
She also worked, she says, with a number of “really brilliant data science researchers” in the Targeted Healthcare Innovation Fellowship (THRIVE), which was created to address COVID-19-related health problems. She additionally participated in the Mount Sinai Innovation Partners Bootcamp to test an app she created to monitor COVID-19 patients. “I never actually got it off the ground, but it was an amazing experience because I learned a lot about what goes into developing medical technology and I will use those skills going forward in my career.”
As much as she enjoys clinical research, Ms. Cullen also immerses herself in understanding patient care and interaction, volunteering 10 hours a week as an emergency medical technician near her home. “Part of the reason that I find the MD portion of my degree so important,” she says, “is that I would like to have a specialty that will inform my research and ultimately help the people that I’m trying to serve.”
Updated on Jul 8, 2022 | Featured, School
Why a master’s degree? Here, five graduates at Mount Sinai’s Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences share how they will use their degree to explore new paths and careers.
Mackenzie Langan Receives a Master of Science in Biomedical Science Degree, Immersing Herself in Research and Gaining New Insights into Brain Disorders
“Mount Sinai has completely changed my life. I’ve had a lot of really great mentors and I definitely would not have gotten here without the support of all those people. Everyone is invested in seeing you succeed. And I think that the level of caring is something that has just really blown me away.”
Read her story
Trisha Tagle: A Project Manager in Neurology Plans to Use Her Master of Health Administration Degree To Move Health Care Forward for All Patients
“One of my project proposals focused on how to make health care technology more inclusive. Not every patient has a smartphone, for example. So how can we give more patients access, to make sure they don’t fall through the cracks? I’m a very process-oriented person, so the idea of making sure we capture everyone is very important to me.”
Read her story
How Conducting Research in Artificial Intelligence Through the Master of Science in Clinical Research Program Puts Olivia Cullen on a Physician-Scientist Path
“For me, the MSCR program was an opportunity to understand the inner workings of clinical research to discover what interested me most. Ultimately, I fell in love with data science research, and now I’m about to begin an MD/PhD program at Mount Sinai with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies in Medicine.”
Read her story
Varsha Venu, MBBS, MPH: How Her Training as a Medical Doctor Revealed a New Passion for Public Health
“Without good public health, the entire community suffers, and that is probably the biggest reason why I chose not to become a practicing doctor, but instead to take on roles that would ensure that I could give the best care to an entire community and not just individual patients. Public health enables me to contribute to society in a more holistic way.”
Read her story
A Unique Set of Resources at Mount Sinai Enables Thomas Dolan To Find a Passion for Biostatistics
“[The faculty’s] passion for biostats stands out, and it really showed in their coursework and even in conversations about their field.”
Read his story
