June 13, 2012Eleven new students have joined the MD/PhD Program

The NYU MSTP welcomes eleven new students to the program after another successful recruiting season.  We are delighted to introduce the following newest members into our student community:

Camila Delgado (BS in Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University)
Alice Fok (BS in Biological Chemistry and Chemistry, University of Chicago)
Joshua Horton (BS in Biochemistry, Indiana University)
Kalman Katlowitz (BE in Interdisciplinary Engineering, Cooper Union)
Julia King (BS in Chemistry and Neuroscience, University of Virginia)
Rose Levenson-Palmer (BA in Biology, Columbia University)
Ashira Lubkin (BA in Biology, Columbia University)
Shirin Mortazavi (BS in Biochemistry, University of Texas at Austin)
Charles Ng (BS in Biophysics, University of California, Los Angeles)
Evan Rosenberg (BS in Biology and Neuroscience, Brandeis University)
Roland Zemla (BS in Biochemistry, Columbia University)

These first-year students will begin their medical training on August 20 after completion of the MSTP Summer Seminar Series and their first summer rotations in the labs of NYU faculty researchers including Erika Bach, Georgy Buzsaki, Brian Dynlacht, Joel Ernst, Stevan Hubbard, Dan Littman, Ian Mohr, Michele Pagano, Charles Peskin, Richard Tsien, and Angus Wilson.

Over 100 faculty members and 22 members of the recruitment committee reviewed applications of more than 400 prospective candidates last fall.  Invitations were extended after five intensive interviewing-day sessions to applicants from a cross-section of outstanding undergraduate institutions including Berkeley, Brandeis, Brown, Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Penn, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA, UVA, and Yale.

The admissions committee and MSTP Director Dr. Mark Philips were very impressed with the exceptional qualities of all of this year's applicants.

March 29, 2012 Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society: Class of 2012 Member

One of our graduating MSTP Fellows was inducted as new member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society at a ceremony held March 29, 2012.  Ian Ahearn  was among the 27 NYU School of Medicine students who were selected to become part of the AΩA Class of 2012. The election by a faculty committee to the AΩA Honor Society represents an acknowledgement of the highest standards of excellence achieved by graduating medical students. In 2011, MSTP graduates Amelie Collins and Santosha Vardhana were two of those honored by the AΩA Society.

Founded in 1902, Alpha Omega Alpha is the national medical honor society. Its mission, in part, is to recognize high educational achievement, encourage the development of leaders in academia and the community, and to promote service to others in the profession of medicine. Students are chosen for election by their school chapters. Members are selected not only for their high academic standing in the top quartile of their class, but also for criteria such as leadership among their peers, professionalism and a firm sense of ethics, promise of future success in medicine, and a commitment to service in the school and community.

July 1, 2011 Eleven new students have joined the NYU MD/PhD Program

Eleven new students have joined the NYU Medical Scientist Training Program for this academic year, capping the efforts of another successful recruiting year for the MD/PhD Program. We are pleased to welcome the following newest members to our student community:

Omotayo Arowojolu (Johns Hopkins University)
Hannah Bernstein (Stanford University)
David Cantor (Pennsylvania State University)
John Dankert (Rochester Institute of Technology)
Jessica Douthit (Temple University)
Victoria Fang (Amherst College)
Marcus Hines (University of Georgia)
Luis Martinez (Harvard University)
Laura McGarry (Columbia University)
Aram Modrek (University of California, Irvine)
Karishma Rahman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

After the conclusion of the MSTP Summer Seminar, the first-year students will start their medical training on August 22. They are also scheduled to rotate through the labs of a number of researchers, including the labs of Adam Carter, Bruce Cronstein, Moses Chao, Robert Froemke, Michelle Krogsgaard, Michele Pagano, Mark Philips, Niels Ringstad, and Naoko Tanese.

More than 100 faculty members and twenty-two members of the recruitment committee reviewed the applications of almost 400 prospective candidates last fall. After seven intensive interviewing-day sessions, the MSTP extended invitations to applicants from a cross-section of outstanding undergraduate institutions, including Berkeley, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, Penn, Princeton, Stanford, Swarthmore, UCLA, and Yale. 

The Admissions Committee and the Director of the MSTP, Dr. Mark Philips, were very impressed with the sterling qualities of all of this year's applicants.

March 4, 2011 2010-2011 Dr. Stanley Minkowitz Memorial Scholarship Award

This year's recipient of the Dr. Stanley Minkowitz Memorial Scholarship Award for the NYU MSTP is Joe Marlin, a first-year graduate student in the Sackler Institute of Biomedical Sciences.

Joe Marlin holds a Bachelor of Arts in Neuroscience and Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the NYU Medical Scientist Training Program in 2008. Under the mentorship of Moses Chao, Joe is currently investigating the development and plasticity of inhibitory synapses in the mammalian central nervous system, focusing on the role of neurotrophins such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF.) Inhibitory neurotransmission plays an essential role in modulating circuit activity for the generation of meaningful rhythms and behaviors, while preventing epileptiform activity. BDNF and other neurotrophins are implicated in various neurologic and psychiatric diseases involving excitation-inhibition imbalance, such as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, and depression.

In many ways, Joe Marlin's trajectory into the NYU MD/PhD Program echoes the experience of other budding physician-scientists. He has always loved the humanistic aspect of medicine and medicine was his field of choice growing up, but he also found deep intellectual satisfaction performing bench research in the laboratory of Prof. Carlos Bustamante at Berkeley. Midway through college Joe discovered the option of MD/PhD programs. As he states, "my hope is to pursue a career in which my basic neuroscience research will translate directly to my clinical practice. I also look forward to playing the role of an educator for future generations of medical and graduate students."

Joe was exposed to the training environment at NYU in the summer of 2007 as a "SURPie," a student in the competitive Summer Undergraduate Research Program. The SURP is offered by the Sackler Institute under the auspices of Dr. Joel Oppenheim, who is the recipient of the 2010 AAAS Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement. As Joe recalls, "that summer is one of the most memorable of my life, full of late nights in the Ziff lab, wandering around the city with my SURPies, and getting to know the Sackler administration, notably Dr. Joel Oppenheim."

Dr. David Roth, the director of the NYU MSTP, notes, "SURP is a great way for undergraduate students to find out if they have what it takes to become physician-scientists since the program requires you to do graduate-level work in a research lab. I am very grateful to Dr. Minkowitz for the scholarships in his name to support MSTP students because they allow promising trainees such as Joe to approach scientific problems with the broad perspective of a physician-scientist."

The Minkowitz Memorial Scholarships are a tribute to the memory of Dr. Stanley Minkowitz, Dr. Gerald Minkowitz's father. Dr. Stanley Minkowitz was a clinically oriented pathologist whose endeavors focused on training young pathologists in both practical, clinical, and research pathology. He was Director of Pathology at Maimonides Medical Center for over 20 years and a Professor of Pathology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center.

The scholarships are made possible by the generous support of philanthropists Dr. and Mrs. Gerald Minkowitz, who established the fellowship in 2009 and who have donated more than $160,000 in support of biomedical education at NYU to date. Dr. Minkowitz is currently Laboratory Director of Minkowitz Pathology and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Pathology at NYU School of Medicine with a strong interest in medical and science education. Dr. Minkowitz received a BS in Bioengineering from Columbia University and was a Guest Investigator at Rockefeller University under the supervision of Günter Blobel. Following an AP/CP Residency at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and a Cytopathology Fellowship at the Lankenau Hospital, he was Assistant Professsor of Pathology at NYU School of Medicine and Assistant Attending Pathologist at Bellevue Hospital. He established the Brooklyn-based Minkowitz Pathology Labs, specializing in Ultrasound-Guided FNA, Surgical Pathology, Cytopathology, and Applied Clinical Research, in 1994.

In addition to the Minkowitz Fellowships, about 15 percent of the MSTP trainees have already secured independent funding through Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Fellowships. Among the current students who have received individual support through NIH funding agencies are Yelina Alvarez (NIAID), Stephen Armenti (NIDDK), Tyler Bold (NHLBI), Chris Bowman (NIA), Jason Chalifoux (NIMH), Brian Clark (NINDS), Scott Drutman (NIA), Dorota Korta (NIDDK), Jon Maffie (NINDS), Jon Mallen St. Clair (NIAAA), Melissa McKenzie (NIMH), Xiaosong Meng (NINDS), and Maureen Nemetski (NHLBI).

The William Randolph Hearst Foundation has also generously supported the NYU MSTP training. The 2010-11 William Randolph Hearst Foundation Fellows are Ijeoma Ejigiri, Pamela Sung, and Roseanne Titcombe. A total of 30 scholarships have been awarded to 16 Hearst Fellows in the MD/PhD Medical Scientist Training Program, with scholarship funds nearing half a million dollars since the inception of the Hearst Fellowship Program in 1999.

Other donor and endowment funds that have supported trainees in the MSTP are the Norman & Rosita Winston Foundation/Paul R. Esserman Memorial Fund, the Saul Krugman Endowment Fund, the Doris Milman-Nathan Kreeger Endowment Fund, and the Arthur C. DeGraff Endowment fund.