Alec C. Kimmelman, MD, PhD, keynote speaker at Mount Sinai’s Lab Coat ceremony
Alec C. Kimmelman, MD, PhD, stepped to the podium as the keynote speaker at Mount Sinai’s Lab Coat Ceremony, the celebratory start of academic research and training for the newest PhD and MD-PhD students. He recalled how he had felt a few decades earlier when he was a Mount Sinai student. “I remember sitting in the same place,” he said, “and I was wondering what the future would hold.”
For Dr. Kimmelman, who received both his MD and PhD degrees at Mount Sinai in 2003, it would be a future of extraordinary successes—starting with his own research thesis, which set the theme for his career investigating RAS-gene-driven cancers. As a student, he would also identify and characterize a novel member of the RAS family of oncogenes, and publish three first-author papers on this topic. Today, Dr Kimmelman, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the biology of pancreatic cancers, is the newly named Dean of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Chief Executive Officer of NYU Langone Health.
“New tools like artificial intelligence may change the scale of discovery but they don’t change its heart,” Dr. Kimmelman told the students. “At its core, science is built on people, and the way we choose to lead each other. When I was a trainee, I didn’t think of myself as a leader in any formal sense. Leadership seems like something reserved for deans or department chairs, but I soon learned that leadership often begins in the lab.” It is where building trust and “other small acts—mentoring, collaborating, encouraging—taught me that leadership is less about hierarchy and more about responsibility,” he said.
Celebrating PhD and MD-PhD students after getting their lab coats.
“Years later, when I was asked to lead a lab, and then a cancer center and, now, a health system, the principles were the same: create an environment where curiosity can thrive, where people support one another, and where integrity is never compromised. The qualities you demonstrate every day at the bench—generosity, persistence, intellectual courage—may one day prepare you for opportunities you cannot yet imagine. Leadership is not something that you wait for a title to give you. It’s something you practice, here and now, in how you approach your science and your colleagues.”
Marta Filizola, PhD, Dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, presided over the ceremony, which was held Thursday, September 4, at Goldwurm Auditorium.
“At Mount Sinai, we continue to advance into frontiers of research that integrate cutting-edge approaches across disciplines, from artificial intelligence and data science, to stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, all aimed at improving human health and quality of life,” she said. “Our students are at the heart of this work, bringing diverse perspectives, creativity, and a relentless drive to push the boundaries of both basic and translational research.” Dr. Filizola is also the Sharon & Frederick A. Klingenstein/Nathan G. Kase, MD Professor of Pharmacological Sciences, Professor of Neuroscience, and Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health.
From left: Sarah E. Millar, PhD, Dean for Academic and Scientific Affairs, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD; Alec C. Kimmelman, MD, PhD; and Marta Filizola, PhD, lead the students in reciting the Oath for Doctoral Students.
Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD, Interim Dean and Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System, welcomed the students and guests and spoke about the vast advances in health care made possible by science, today’s challenges to scientific inquiry, and, significantly, the need for optimism and new discoveries.
“Advances now occurring in the laboratory and clinic, driven in part by the power of computational and molecular biology and artificial intelligence, and informed by unprecedented volumes of biomedical data,” Dr. Nestler said, “will fundamentally transform the way we understand, diagnose, treat, and prevent disease. We must shout this from the mountaintops.”
However, “We live in a time when some people do question the value of scientific inquiry,” he added. “Efforts to politicize science are most unfortunate. Today, we are seeing an unprecedented assault on the nation’s scientific enterprise.”
Still, “We must remain optimistic,” he urged. “The importance of biomedical research is too strong and too widely held for us to back away, and the biomedical research enterprise is more exciting and promising today than ever before in world history.”
Click on the arrows below for a slideshow of faculty and students.
