Chairs Named for Two Departments
Biomedical Informatics
Noémie Elhadad, PhD, vice chair for research in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and director of the department’s graduate program, succeeded George Hripcsak, MD, who chaired the department for 15 years and helped establish Columbia’s informatics program as a recognized pioneer and leader in the field. Dr. Elhadad has longstanding affiliations with the Department of Computer Science and the Columbia Data Science Institute.
In addition to contributing multidisciplinary research, DBMI provides critical information support services to NewYork-Presbyterian.
Dr. Elhadad’s research, which lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence, human-centered computing, and medicine, focuses on developing novel machine-learning methods. She develops new artificial intelligence tools to support patients and clinicians with an emphasis on ensuring that emerging AI systems are fair and just. Dr. Elhadad is the leader of eve_n, a Columbia interdisciplinary research initiative on data-powered women’s health. The initiative has generated novel disease insights through large-scale community engagement and the application of machine learning to health care data.
Dr. Elhadad has been on the DBMI faculty since 2007. She received her PhD in computer science from Columbia in 2006.
Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics
Stavros Lomvardas, PhD, the Florence and Herbert Irving Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics, succeeded Art Palmer, PhD, who served as interim chair of the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics since Tom Maniatis, PhD, stepped down as chair in 2018.
Dr. Lomvardas is the first to carry the title P. Roy Vagelos Chair of the department. He also is a principal investigator at the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.
Dr. Lomvardas’ research focuses on the genomic mechanisms of olfactory receptor gene choice and the elucidation of the molecular principles of genome organization in health and disease.
Dr. Lomvardas received his PhD in biochemistry & molecular biophysics from Columbia then completed postdoctoral studies as a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow in the lab of Richard Axel, MD. He discovered a novel mechanism of gene regulation through interchromosomal genomic interactions. After starting his independent research career at the University of California, San Francisco, he was recruited back to Columbia as a full professor in 2014.