Five winners in the Weill Department of Medicine have been selected to receive Fund for the Future awards to pursue a wide range of breakthrough research. Due to the generosity of Michael M. Kellen (Overseer, Weill Cornell Medicine) and his wife, Denise Kellen and the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, as well as the Iris Cantor Health Center, the newly established award is supporting selected faculty during the crucial period of career development spanning completion of research training through the early years of their first faculty position held at Weill Cornell Medicine.
The winners are Kerri Aronson, M.D., (rising Instructor in Medicine) Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine; Miguel de Mulder, Ph.D. (Assistant Professor of Virology Research in Medicine), Division of Infectious Diseases; Vikas Gupta, M.D., Ph.D., (Rising Instructor), Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology; Shashi Kapadia, M.D. (Instructor), Division of Infectious Diseases; and Ines Sherifi, M.D. (Assistant Professor), Division of Cardiology.
Dr. Aronson is studying patient-centered outcomes in interstitial lung disease and is focused on the development and validation of a disease-specific, health-related quality-of-life instrument (for use in both clinical practice and research) for patients with hypersensitivity pneumonitis. She obtained her M.D. at the State University of New York, Upstate Medical University, Syracuse New York, and completed residency training in Internal Medicine in the WDOM, during which time she served as a Chief Resident. She is currently a fellow in the WDOM’s Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.
Dr. de Mulder is studying the links between human endogenous retroviruses expression in the context of HIV infection and cancer. He earned his Ph.D. in Immunology and virology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain while studying the patterns of HIV-1 drug resistance acquisition and molecular epidemiology in pediatric HIV cohorts.
Dr. Gupta is performing postdoctoral research with a focus on understanding the mechanisms that generate and reverse hepatic fibrosis. After obtaining his M.D. and Ph.D at Duke University and completing residency training in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Gupta pursued fellowship training at Weill Cornell to gain expertise in liver diseases.
Dr. Shashi Kapadia is conducting clinical and health services research on the equitable delivery of healthcare to people who use drugs, particularly related to hepatitis C and other infections. He is examining the uptake in hepatitis C treatment by primary care providers in New York State Medicaid and how this impacts treatment access. He completed an Infectious Diseases Fellowship, a Public Health and General Preventive Medicine Residency, and a Master’s of Science in Clinical Investigation at Weill Cornell Medicine.
Dr. Sherifi is working on a project to produce a model of strain-stress analysis of the myocardium which can be used for refined assessments and prognostication in patients with aortic stenosis. A practicing cardiologist and a faculty member of the echocardiography and vascular imaging laboratories, Dr. Sherifi completed her undergraduate years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in Chemical Engineering, and subsequently studied medicine at the University of Toronto. She earned a Master’s of Science Degree at the Université Paris Diderot in Paris, France in Science, Technologies and Health.
The Fund for the Future program provides an initial year of funding to the recipient with a total funding maximum of $300,000. This funding is based upon academic progress and a competitive training award (such as an NIH K) application timeline within 18 months of initiation of the Fund for the Future support. Those winners who are currently fellows will be joining the faculty of the WDOM in July of 2019, which is a prerequisite of the Fund For the Future award.