Our Team

Leadership

  • Jason Adelman, MD, MS

    • Associate Chief Quality Officer and Executive Director, Center for Patient Safety Research
    • Program Director, Patient Safety Research Fellowship
    • Vice Chair for Quality & Patient Safety, Department of Medicine
    • Associate Professor of Medicine (in Biomedical Informatics)
    Jason Adelman MD, MS
  • Benjamin L. Ranard, MD, MSHP

    • Deputy Executive Director, Center for Patient Safety Research
    • Associate Program Director, Patient Safety Research Fellowship
    • Assistant Professor of Medicine, CUIMC Department of Medicine
    Benjamin L. Ranard, MD, MSHP
  • I-Fong Lehman, DrPH, MS

    • Director, Center for Patient Safety Research
    • Administrative Director, Patient Safety Research Fellowship

    Dr. Lehman is the Director of the Center for Patient Safety Research where she is responsible for overall operations including grant and contract activities. Previously, she was the Director of Quality and Patient Safety at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University overseeing Columbia Milstein, The Allen Hospital and Lawrence Hospital. Prior to joining NYPH, she was the Director of Clinical Communities at The Johns Hopkins’ Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. She earned her DrPH in Health Policy and Management from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and her MS in Health Policy and Administration from the Harvard School of Public Health.

    I-Fong Lehman, DrPH, MS
  • Anne Grauer, MD, MS

    • Director of Medication Safety, Center for Patient Safety Research
    • Associate Program Director, Patient Safety Research Fellowship
    • Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at CUIMC
    • Associate Director of Quality and Patient Safety, CUIMC Department of Medicine
    Anne Grauer, MD, MS
  • Maureen Kelly, MD

    • Director, Quality and Patient Safety, CUIMC Department of Medicine
    • Clinical Director, Patient Safety Research Fellowship
    Maureen Kelly, MD
  • Donald E. Dietz, MD, MS

    • Weill Cornell Medicine Lead
    Donald E. Dietz, MD, MS

Junior Faculty (ECRIP, 2022-2024)

  • Danielle Carter, MD, MS

    • Assistant Professor of Medicine

    Dr. Carter is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Medicine. Prior to this she obtained her medical degree from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and completed internal medicine residency at New York Presbyterian-Columbia University Medical Center in 2020. She was a Patient Safety Research Fellow from 2020-2022 where she did work related to patient safety during the COVID-19 epidemic and prevention of hospital acquired infections. She also obtained a MS in Epidemiology from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.  She is currently supported by the Empire Clinical Research Investigator Program to continue research related to clinical decision support and health IT safety. 

    Danielle Carter, MD, MS
  • Jerard Z. Kneifati-Hayek, MD, MS

    • Assistant Professor of Medicine

    Dr. Kneifati-Hayek was the inaugural Patient Safety Research Fellow at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He graduated from Weill Cornell Medicine in 2014 and completed residency at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell in 2017. He completed his Patient Safety Research fellowship in 2020 and went on to join the faculty at Columbia University Irving Medical Center Department of Medicine, Division of General Medicine as an Assistant Professor. He now serves as an Assistant Director of Quality and Patient Safety for the Department of Medicine, the faculty advisor to the NewYork-Presbyterian Columbia Housestaff Quality Council, the Co-Chair of the NewYork-Presbyterian Columbia Patient Safety Working group, a member of the founding Board of Directors of the Vagelos Physicians & Surgeons Latino Association, and a member of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center Institutional Review Board. During his time as faculty Dr. Kneifati-Hayek has received a National Institute of Health Loan Repayment Award and is currently an Empire Clinical Research Investigator Program Fellow at NewYork-Presbyterian Columbia.

    Jerard Z. Kneifati-Hayek, MD, MS
  • Pooja Reddy, MD, MS

    • Assistant Professor of Pediatrics

    Dr. Pooja Reddy is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and an Attending Pediatrician at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital. She practices in the Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation. 

    Prior to her faculty appointment, Dr. Reddy earned a BA in Economics from the University of Virginia prior to pursuing her medical education at Emory University School of Medicine. She completed her residency in Pediatrics at The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore and clinical fellowships in Pediatric Gastroenterology and Advanced Transplant Hepatology at NewYork-Presbyterian Columbia University Medical Center. During this time, she pursued funded formal training in Patient Safety Research and earned a Master’s degree in Epidemiology from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.  

    Dr. Reddy’s clinical practice is focused on the management of pediatric patients with a range of liver diseases including neonatal cholestasis, biliary atresia, rare metabolic diseases, viral hepatitis, liver tumors including hepatoblastoma, and autoimmune liver disease. She has completed advanced training in the management of pediatric liver and intestinal failure and is experienced in caring for patients both prior to and after undergoing liver, intestinal and multi-visceral transplants. Dr. Reddy performs several procedures including percutaneous liver biopsy, endoscopy, variceal band-ligation, and colonoscopy. While caring for patients, she aims to educate both her patients and their families as they work together toward shared decision-making and optimal treatment outcomes. 

    During Dr. Reddy’s time as a Patient Safety Research Fellow, she focused on utilizing health information technology to prevent medical errors and improve the quality and efficiency with which patient care is delivered. She is currently supported by the Empire Clinical Research Investigator Program (ECRIP) to continue her work with Dr. Jason Adelman MD, MS to detect and ultimately prevent order errors in computerized order entry systems by evaluating the accuracy of an automated wrong-dose detection measure.  

    Pooja Reddy, MD, MS

Patient Safety Research Fellows (AHRQ T32)

  • Nicole Krenitsky, MD, MBA

    Dr. Krenitsky is a Fellow in Patient Safety Research and Clinical Fellow in Maternal-Fetal Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She earned her MD/MBA at Yale Schools of Medicine and Management and went on to complete her residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia. Dr. Krenitsky is a current member of the Columbia Housestaff Quality Council and is interested in leveraging informatics and deep learning to improve safety and quality outcomes for obstetric patients.

    Nicole Krenitsky, MD, MBA

Staff

  • Yelstin Fernandes, BS

    • Programmer

    Yelstin joined the Center for Patient Safety Research in 2018 as a Programmer.  He is responsible for organizing, analyzing, and leveraging healthcare data in order to develop programmatic tools that support the team's ongoing research and operational duties.  Yelstin comes from a background in biology research holding a B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Rochester.  Additionally, he was exposed to patient care and safety as an EMT-B, and began to code as a hobby.  He is excited to now be using data analytics to reduce medical errors.  In his spare time Yelstin enjoys baseball, cooking, and travel.

  • Neha Thummala, MPH

    • Program Coordinator

    Neha joined the Center for Patient Safety Research in 2021 as a Program Coordinator. She is responsible for supporting various research-related activities, including project coordination of research studies and submissions to the IRB. Neha graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a BA in Public Health Studies and received her MPH in Epidemiology from Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in 2021.

  • Ing Haviland, BA

    • Scientific Grant & Communications Writer

    Ing has recently joined the Center for Patient Safety Research with over 20 years’ experience as a medical communications editor, writer, and information design specialist. She has helped develop numerous presentations, manuscripts, abstracts, posters, multimedia projects, and other materials on a wide range of topics for professional, institutional, patient, and donor audiences. Ing has a passion for working with teams on multi-stage iterations to elucidate complex issues, process structures, and potential advancements that engage key audiences.

Collaborators

Program Advisors

Columbia University Irving Medical Center

  • Katrina Armstrong, MD, MSCE
  • R. Graham Barr, MD, DrPH
  • Dena Goffman, MD, MS
  • George Hripcsak, MD, MS
  • Donald Landry, MD, PhD
  • Steven Shea, MD, MS
  • Melissa Stockwell, MD, MPH

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital

  • Peter M. Fleischut, MD
  • Deepa Kumaraiah, MD, MBA

Weill Cornell Medicine

  • Yiye Zhang, PhD, MS

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

  • William Southern, MD, MS

Brigham and Women's Hospital

  • David W. Bates, MD, MS
  • Patricia C. Dykes, PhD, MA, RN

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

  • Hojjat Salmasian, MD, PhD

Johns Hopkins University

  • Allen Chen, MD
  • Albert Wu, MD, MPH

Mothers Against Medical Error

  • Helen Haskell, MA