NEW YORK (April 28, 2017) – Weill Cornell Medicine today announced a gift made by WorldQuant, LLC (“WorldQuant”)  and Igor Tulchinsky that will further realize the promise of precision medicine. The $5 million gift establishes a new initiative that will use predictive tools to enhance Weill Cornell Medicine’s capability to diagnose and treat a variety of illnesses, with the goal of improving outcomes for patients.

Dear Weill Cornell Medicine Community,

I am pleased to announce the creation of two new leadership positions to support our students and enhance our climate of diversity.  Dr. Elizabeth Wilson-Anstey and Dr. Marcus Lambert have both been appointed to the role of assistant dean of diversity and student life.  Together they will lead a revitalized effort to ensure that the needs of our diverse medical and graduate student populations are met.

Milka Doktorova realized early into her PhD research that she might need to work in two different labs, hundreds of miles apart. It was the only way she could validate simulations and examine in atomic detail the way our cell membranes function – information that could ultimately lead to developing effective medications. Until now, most studies on how medications affect membrane barriers and the proteins that live in them have been performed with artificial symmetric membranes, even though membranes in the body are asymmetric.

Dr. Carol Storey-Johnson, senior advisor for medical education and a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, has won the 2017 Distinguished Educator Award from the Northeast Group on Educational Affairs (NEGEA).

As an undergraduate student, Du Cheng invented a laboratory camera adapter that allowed scientists to capture images with an iPhone and view them through a microscope. Although he figured out how to manufacture his technology, Cheng, a fourth-year M.D.-Ph.D. student at Weill Cornell Medicine, needed help turning his product into a viable business.

Wan-Ying Hsieh’s research on glioblastoma, an aggressive and difficult-to-treat type of brain tumor, has yielded compelling results. A fifth-year student in the Weill Cornell Medicine Graduate School of Medical Sciences in the lab of Dr. Ingo Mellinghoff at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Hsieh has added another piece to the puzzle of how the oncogenic epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is regulated in normal and cancerous cells, expanding the emerging picture of its activity and identifying a potential new candidate for drug discovery.