Faculty
The program faculty includes a diverse group of 23 accomplished researchers, each with a proven track record of federal grant funding, interdisciplinary research collaborations, extensive peer-reviewed journal publication, and successful mentorship experience. Our Faculty Mentors represent a broad range of disciplines: General Medicine, Pediatrics, Behavioral Cardiology, Infectious Diseases, Psychiatry, Neurosurgery, Pathology, Biomedical Informatics, Nursing, Epidemiology, and Health Policy. Fellows will be matched with a primary Faculty Mentor based on their research interests, research background, and clinical discipline, and may be matched with a secondary mentor to complement and provide additional support for their research project. Faculty Mentors will guide and support Fellows throughout the 2-year program to complete their research project, publish their results, and pursue independent research funding.
Faculty Mentors have expertise and active research funding in a wide range of patient safety and health services research focus areas, including:
- Medical errors
- Medication safety
- Health informatics
- Healthcare-associated infections
- Hospital-acquired conditions
- Sepsis
- Quality measurement and outcomes
- Healthcare costs and cost-effectiveness
- Chronic disease epidemiology
- Telehealth
- Health disparities
For detailed faculty profiles, please see below.
Co-Directors
Jason Adelman, MD, MS
- Chief Patient Safety Officer at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Executive Director of Patient Safety Research, Fellowship Co-Director, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics
Jason Adelman, MD, MS is Chief Patient Safety Officer at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Executive Director of Patient Safety Research, Co-Director of the Patient Safety Research Fellowship in Hospital Medicine, and Assistant Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics. Dr. Adelman’s research focuses on development of measures to quantify medical errors, epidemiology medical errors in healthcare systems, and testing of systematic approaches to reduce these errors using health information technology (IT). Dr. Adelman developed the first health IT safety measure endorsed by the National Quality Forum, the Wrong-Patient Retract-and-Reorder measure. He is principal investigator of four grant-funded projects: 1) to develop and validate health IT safety measures based on the 5 Rights of Medication Safety; 2) to determine whether multiple patient records open in an electronic health record (EHR) increases wrong-patient errors; 3) to test the effect of patient photographs for preventing wrong-patient errors in three EHR systems; and 4) to test the effect of Pictographs, a novel identifier for newborns, for reducing wrong-patient errors in neonatal intensive care units.
Graham Barr, MD, DrPH
- Fellowship Co-Director, Hamilton Southworth Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Chief of the Division of General Medicine
Graham Barr, MD, DrPH is Hamilton Southworth Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Director of the Columbia Respiratory Epidemiology Program, Co-Director of the Patient Safety Research Fellowship in Hospital Medicine, and Chief of the Division of General Medicine. Dr. Barr's research focuses primarily on the respiratory epidemiology of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). He leads studies on the role of endothelial dysfunction and systemic inflammation in obstructive lung disease in the Multi Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), and dietary factors, systemic inflammation and COPD in a cohort of current and former smokers (EMCAP). He has additional interests in the potential of drugs such as over-the-counter analgesics to modulate host responses in obstructive lung disease, air pollution, and clinical epidemiologic methods.
Faculty
Suzanne B. Bakken, PhD, RN, FAAN, FACMI
- Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Alumni Professor in the School of Nursing
Suzanne B. Bakken, PhD, RN, FAAN, FACMI is Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Alumni Professor in the School of Nursing. Dr. Bakken is the Director of the Center for Evidence-based Practice in the Underserved, and leads Columbia’s Precision in Symptom Self-Management (PriSSM) Center of Excellence. Her research interests include using health IT to reduce health disparities, mining and visualization of healthcare data for varying health literacy levels, and chronic disease/symptom self-management. Dr. Bakken served as principal investigator of the Washington Heights/Inwood Informatics Infrastructure for Comparative Effectiveness Research (WICER) study, which will be a resource for fellows to examine relationships among sociodemographics, anthropometrics, patient-reported outcomes, and inpatient clinical outcomes in a predominantly Hispanic population.
E. Sander Connolly, MD, FACS
- Bennett M. Stein Professor of Neurological Surgery, Vice Chair of Neurological Surgery, Director of the Cerebrovascular Research Laboratory
E. Sander Connolly, MD, FACS is Bennett M. Stein Professor, Vice Chair of Neurological Surgery, Surgical Director of the Neuro-Intensive Care Unit, and Director of the Cerebrovascular Research Laboratory. Dr. Connolly’s research focuses on improving the functional outcome of patients with cerebrovascular emergencies, improving the cognitive outcome of patients undergoing cerebral revascularization, and preventing surgical site infections. Dr. Connolly is principal investigator for a study evaluating the use of topical vancomycin following craniotomy procedures to prevent surgical site infections, which are associated with poor outcomes and high costs. Evidence from other surgical specialties suggests that topical vancomycin decreases infection rates while minimizing the risk of adverse events associated with systemic vancomycin exposure.
Peter S. Dayan, MD
- Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Peter Dayan, MD is Associate Professor of Pediatrics. He has served as a principal investigator of the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) for 13 years and has been principal investigator of several PECARN studies. Dr. Dayan’s research focuses on optimizing diagnostic assessment of children with minor head trauma, seizures, and fever, and using risk stratification models in clinical decision support. His research has also focused on dissemination and implementation science, serving as principal investigator of a multi-center study to develop and test the effectiveness of clinical decision support in the EHR to safely minimize the use of computed tomography for children with minor head trauma.
Noemie Elhadad, PhD
- Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics
Noemie Elhadad, PhD is Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics. Her research focuses on natural language processing applied to clinical data to provide actionable information about diseases and health trajectories of patients over time. Dr. Elhadad designed, developed, and deployed HARVEST, a real-time, interactive view of a patient’s problems extracted from notes in the patient record, which is currently used in the clinical information system at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Elhadad is principal investigator of a project to design robust, scalable tools to leverage big health data and disseminate them to a wide range of stakeholders.
Carol Friedman, PhD
- Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Director of Graduate Training Program in the Department of Biomedical Informatics
Carol Friedman, PhD is Professor of Biomedical Informatics, and Director of the Graduate Training Program in the Department of Biomedical Informatics. Dr. Friedman’s research interests include natural language processing, text mining, knowledge representation, medication safety, and pharmacovigilance. She developed MedLEE (Medical Language Extraction and Encoding System), one of the leading natural language processing systems in the field. Her research focuses on using data in the patient medical record and from other sources to improve drug safety. She has developed methods to detect drug overuse and adverse drug events through natural language processing, statistical, and knowledge-based methods. Dr. Friedman is principal investigator of a study to identify serious adverse drug reactions using automated methods that combine information from large and varied patient populations, national reporting systems, and the clinical literature. She is using pharmacogenomics information in her research to detect possible adverse events due to genomic variations in drug metabolism.
Eldad Arie Hod, MD
- Associate Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology, Director of the Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine
Eldad Arie Hod, MD is Associate Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology, and Director of the Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine (CALM). Dr. Hod’s research focuses on the safety of red blood cell transfusions, particularly related to refrigerated storage, hemolytic transfusion reactions, and infection risk. Dr. Hod conducted retrospective studies to examine the role of red blood cell storage on central line-associated bloodstream infections. Dr. Hod is currently principal investigator and co-principal investigator of two HNLBI-funded studies: the first study is to determine the association between the duration of red blood cell storage and the risk of CLABSIs in pediatric and adult hospitalized patients and the second is to examine the clinically relevant effects of donor iron deficiency on red blood cell storage quality. In addition, Dr. Hod is responsible for Quality Assurance on behalf of the Automated Clinical Core Laboratory at CUIMC/NYPH, with access to all of the hospital’s clinical laboratory and transfusion data for use in quality improvement projects.
George Hripcsak, MD, MS, FACMI
- Vivian Beaumont Allen Professor, Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics
George Hripcsak, MD, MS, FACMI is Vivian Beaumont Allen Professor, Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics, and Director of Medical Informatics Services for NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Hripcsak has broad research interests, including clinical decision support, natural language processing, observational research, data mining, health information exchange, precision medicine, and public policy related to informatics. Dr. Hripcsak is principal investigator of the Observational Health Data Science and Informatics (OHDSI) collaborative, which includes 140 researchers from 14 countries and over 600 million health records. In his work in precision medicine, Dr. Hripcsak is principal investigator on the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network grant, and multiple principal investigator on Columbia’s regional recruitment center for the NIH Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) Cohort Program.
Ian Kronish, MD, MPH
- Associate Professor of Medicine
Ian Kronish, MD, MPH is Associate Professor of Medicine. Dr. Kronish’s research focuses on novel approaches to hypertension diagnosis and treatment, and the psychological impact of acute cardiovascular events on medication adherence and prognosis. Dr. Kronish is principal investigator of a study to develop and test an intervention to increase uptake of hypertension screening guidelines in New York-Presbyterian’s outpatient settings. He is also principal investigator of two studies among patients with acute coronary syndromes to assess the impact of 1) depression screening on health-related quality of life, depressive symptoms, and costs, and 2) PTSD symptoms on adherence to medications and prognosis. Fellows working with Dr. Kronish will have access to datasets that include large cohorts of patients with acute coronary syndromes and stroke to examine the clinical, psychological, and physiological factors that impact medication adherence and outcomes.
Elaine Larson, PhD, RN, FAAN, CIC
- Professor of Pharmaceutical and Therapeutic Research, Associate Dean for Research at the Columbia University School of Nursing
Elaine Larson, PhD, RN, FAAN, CIC is Professor of Pharmaceutical and Therapeutic Research, Associate Dean for Research at the Columbia University School of Nursing, and Co-Director of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research Pilot and Collaborative Studies. Her research focuses on infection prevention and control using health information technology, with a particular emphasis on underserved populations. Dr. Larson is principal investigator of a study to examine the impact on hospital-acquired infections on nursing care demands and outbreaks of community infectious diseases using data from ~1 million discharges from four hospitals. Dr. Larson completed a large CDC-funded project to assess the impact of electronic surveillance on adherence to isolation precautions for MRSA.
Jose Luchsinger, MD, MPH
- Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Vice Chair for Clinical and Epidemiologic Research
Jose Luchsinger, MD, MPH is Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, and Vice Chair for Clinical and Epidemiologic Research. Dr. Luchsinger’s research focuses on the impact of vascular, metabolic, and dietary factors on aging outcomes and cognition, and has been conducting research on risk factors for cognitive disorders in diverse populations for nearly 20 years. His research is multidisciplinary, bridging the disciplines of medicine, psychiatry, neurology, geriatrics, and epidemiology, and translational research, using results of observational studies to design clinical trials with primary cognitive outcomes. Dr. Luchsinger is currently principal investigator of four studies on risk factors, epidemiology, and prevention of dementia. In addition, Dr. Luchsinger has experience with leadership, teaching, grant reviews, and research regulations, and is thus well-positioned to mentor new scientists.
Lena Mamykinda, PhD
- Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics
Lena Mamykina, PhD is Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics. Her research focuses on using novel computing technologies to develop communication tools for members of interdisciplinary clinical teams caring for patients with chronic disease, create social computing platforms for online health communities, improve nutrition literacy and dietary behaviors among patients with diabetes, and develop innovative approaches to problem-solving and self-management of diabetes. Dr. Mamykina is currently principal investigator of a project to develop and rigorously evaluate an intervention that uses computational methods to correlate fluctuations in blood glucose levels with individuals’ behavioral patterns captured by self-monitoring technologies, and provide feedback to reinforce and promote positive behaviors.
Nathalie Moise, MD, MS
- Assistant Professor of Medicine
Nathalie Moise, MD, MS is Assistant Professor of Medicine. Dr. Moise is principal investigator of a project funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, which engages patients and other stakeholders in identifying medical conditions and methodologies conducive to innovative N-of-1 trials. She also is principal investigator of a study to develop and evaluate an electronic shared decision-making tool for collaborative depression treatment among minority populations. She has published in the areas of medication adherence and shared decision-making related to chronic disease management, particularly hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and depression.
Vimla Patel, PhD
- Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University, Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies in Medicine and Public Health at New York Academy of Medicine
Vimla Patel, PhD is Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University, and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies in Medicine and Public Health at New York Academy of Medicine, where she directs the 5-year James S. McDonnell Foundation research project “Complexity and Error in Health Care.” Dr. Patel’s research focuses on the intersection of biomedical informatics and cognitive psychology in healthcare, including the impact of technology on human cognition and performance, group decision-making in critical care, and medical errors using health IT systems. Dr. Patel’s research examined errors in complex clinical environments, where interruption, information and task overload, and challenges using health IT compromise patient safety. She is principal investigator of a study to examine the impact of meaningful use criteria on information seeking, team-interaction, and decision-making among ED clinicians at two urban hospitals to inform patient safety guidelines for EHRs.
Harold Pincus, MD
- Professor and Vice Chair of Psychiatry, Co-Director of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, Director of Quality and Outcomes Research at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
Harold Pincus, MD is Professor and Vice Chair of Psychiatry, Co-Director of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, and Director of Quality and Outcomes Research at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Pincus has expertise and extensive research experience in quality measurement and patient safety, health services and policy, and behavioral health service delivery, as well as direct experience in health policy related to quality and patient safety. He has led multiple quality measurement and evaluation projects sponsored by several federal agencies. Dr. Pincus is principal investigator of a project to enhance the capacity of ICD-11 to capture quality and patient safety data to improve surveillance in health systems and promote health services and patient outcomes research. He leads an NIH K award workshop that helps prepare applicants to submit K Award proposals.
Susan Rosenthal, PhD, ABPP
- Professor of Behavioral Medicine, Vice Chair for Faculty Development in the Department of Pediatrics
Susan Rosenthal, PhD, ABPP is Professor of Behavioral Medicine, Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Health, and Vice Chair for Faculty Development in the Department of Pediatrics. As Division Director, Dr. Rosenthal oversees all pediatric quality assurance projects conducted in inpatient and outpatient settings, and co-leads training programs to enhance skills of faculty to rigorously address patient safety issues. Her research focuses on promotion of sexual health among underserved and vulnerable youth, acceptability of vaccines, microbicides, and multi-purpose technologies, the role of families in promoting sexual health, and adolescent participation in reproductive clinical trials. She recently completed a study to assess factors that influence adolescent participation in STI prevention trials; fellows will have the opportunity to explore the rich qualitative and quantitative data from this study to answer additional research questions.
Lisa Saiman, MD, MPH
- Professor of Pediatrics
Lisa Saiman, MD, MPH is Professor of Pediatrics and Hospital Epidemiologist at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian. Dr. Saiman’s research interests include multidrug-resistant pathogens, cystic fibrosis associated lung infections, infection prevention and control, and community- and hospital-based surveillance for infectious diseases. Dr. Saiman’s work confirmed the link between colonization of the neonatal gastrointestinal tract with Candida or Gram-negative bacilli and neonatal infections. Dr. Saiman is co-principal investigator, with Dr. Melissa Stockwell, of a study to assess the effect of a text message intervention to reduce transmission of influenza and other respiratory infections in the community.
Jingjing Shang, PhD, RN
- Assistant Professor of Nursing
Jingjing Shang, PhD, RN is Assistant Professor of Nursing at Columbia University School of Nursing. Dr. Shang’s research interests include healthcare-associated infection (HAI), infection control in the hospital and home care settings, and statistical modeling. She also has collaborated on interdisciplinary health services research to examine the relationships between patient safety, quality of care, and nurse organizational factors. Dr. Shang’s research on HAIs has focused on identifying risk factors, examining the relationship between hospital nurse staffing and HAIs, and developing predictive risk models to guide infection prevention and control in the home care setting to reduce readmissions. She is principal investigator of a study to develop and test a predictive risk model to identify patients at high-risk for infection, assess current infection control practices, and explore how risk modeling can be utilized in clinical practice.
Steven Shea, MD, MS
- Hamilton Southworth Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Senior Vice Dean of the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
Steven Shea, MD, MS is Hamilton Southworth Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, and Senior Vice Dean of the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Shea’s research focuses on cardiovascular disease epidemiology with hypertension and blood pressure particular areas of interest. Since 2000, he has been the principal investigator of the Columbia University Field Center for the MESA study, a rich resource for studying the complex interplay of demographic, behavioral, social, neighborhood, and environmental risk factors that contribute to disparities in health-related behaviors, subclinical cardiovascular and pulmonary disease, and cardiovascular events. Dr. Shea serves as Co-Director for the Division of General Medicine’s Primary Care Research Fellowship.
Melissa Stockwell, MD, MPH
- Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Population and Family Health
Melissa Stockwell, MD, MPH is Florence Irving Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Professor of Population and Family Health, and Associate Director of the Pediatric Research at the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Stockwell’s research focuses on health IT interventions to improve vaccination rates among underserved pediatric, obstetric, and adult populations, and for surveillance of vaccine-preventable diseases and adverse events. She is principal investigator on five federally funded grants, including a randomized trial assessing the effect of text message reminders on HPV vaccine completion rates among minority adolescents, and another randomized trial testing the effect of tailored reminders for providers on immunization rates in a low-income, urban, pediatric population. Dr. Stockwell is Co-Director of the Division of General Medicine’s Primary Care Research Fellowship.
Patricia W. Stone, PhD, RN, FAAN
- Centennial Professor of Health Policy, Director of the Center for Health Policy at Columbia University School of Nursing
Patricia W. Stone, PhD, RN, FAAN is Centennial Professor of Health Policy and the Director of the Center for Health Policy at Columbia University School of Nursing. Dr. Stone’s research focuses on the impact of organizational factors, such as staffing and adherence or evidence-based practices, on patient safety outcomes (mainly healthcare-associated infections) and system outcomes (costs and efficiency). Dr. Stone is principal investigator of a study to examine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of infection management in the context of palliative care at the end of life.
Anne-Catrin Uhlemann, MD, PhD
- Florence Irving Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases
Anne-Catrin Uhlemann, MD, PhD is Florence Irving Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases. Dr. Uhlemann’s research focuses on the evolution and transmission of bacterial pathogens, development of post-transplant infection, and preventive approaches to Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) infections. Dr. Uhlemann is principal investigator of a study that combines high-resolution genomics with detailed epidemiological investigations to monitor the evolution of post-transplant CRE infections in real time. This research will have direct translational impact by establishing a framework to track the emergence of multi-drug resistant infections and devise novel containment strategies for CREs.