Fall 2025 Alumni News

By Julia Hickey González, alumni editor

1962

Warren Johnson, a professor emeritus of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been awarded the institution’s Joan and Sanford I. Weill Exemplary Achievement Award for a faculty member whose transformational work enhances health care worldwide. Dr. Johnson’s first exposure to international health was during medical school at VP&S, when he worked at a mission hospital in Liberia. Dr. Johnson went on to champion global health during a 60-year career at Weill Cornell, in which he established research and training programs around the world, including in Brazil, Haiti, and Tanzania. He served the school as chief of the Division of International Medicine and Infectious Disease until he was named the founding director of the school’s Center for Global Health in 2009.

1983

Donald W. Landry, formerly the Hamilton Southworth Professor of Medicine and director of the Center for Human Longevity at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC), has been appointed interim president of the University of Florida, one of the country’s largest public universities. A pioneering clinician, researcher, and administrator who has been a member of the Columbia community for over 45 years, Dr. Landry previously served as physician-in-chief at NewYork- Presbyterian/CUIMC. As chair of the Department of Medicine at VP&S, he significantly increased the number of faculty in the department and oversaw a 300% increase in National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded research, raising the department’s NIH ranking from 15th to the top five. Dr. Landry was the founding director of the Division of Experimental Therapeutics and started the sub-subspecialty of ICU nephrology while director of the Division of Nephrology. He is also the founding director of the Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellowship Program at VP&S and served on the admissions committee for VP&S for 31 years.

1989

Laurence Huang received the 2025 University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Academic Senate Distinction in Mentoring Award, which recognizes exceptional mentoring by faculty to other faculty or to fellows. Dr. Huang is a founding co-director of Faculty Mentoring and Sponsorship in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Allergy, and Sleep Medicine at UCSF. He also helped establish the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute Mentor Development Program and has mentored more than 100 junior investigators over the past 30 years. Dr. Huang’s passion for research and mentoring traces back to his formative years as a medical student working in the laboratory of Richard B. Robinson, MD. During his internal medicine residency at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, his clinical practice, teaching philosophy, and mentoring style were informed by role models including Randolph Cole, MD, and Glenda Garvey, MD. Their influence guides his work at UCSF, where he remains committed to fostering the growth and development of the next generation of physicianscientist leaders.

Fadlo R. Khuri was inducted in 2025 as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the specialty of Educational and Academic Leadership. As president of the American University of Beirut (AUB) since 2015, he has expanded academic tenure, increased financial assistance, diversified the student body, and raised the institution’s global profile while guiding the university through difficulties presented by international conflicts and the pandemic. Dr. Khuri, a molecular oncologist, was born in Boston and brought up in Beirut, where he attended AUB before returning to the United States and earning his BA from Yale University. He was previously a faculty member at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and served Emory University for 13 years in roles including the Roberto C. Goizueta Distinguished Chair for Cancer Research, professor and chair of the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology, executive associate dean for research, and deputy director of the university’s Winship Cancer Institute. His research has focused on the development of molecular, prognostic, therapeutic, and chemopreventive approaches to improve the standard of care for patients with lung and aerodigestive cancers. He is the current vice president of the Lebanese Academy of Sciences.

Chris Shibutani has joined biopharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) as executive vice president and chief strategy officer. Dr. Shibutani trained in anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, practiced at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and earned an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1997. He spent over two decades on Wall Street as an equity research analyst and portfolio manager covering and investing in companies across the global pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries. Before joining the leadership team at BMS, he was a managing director in the Global Investment Research division at Goldman Sachs.

1991

Yuka Manabe is director of the Center for Innovative Diagnostics for Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins Medicine, where since 2019, she has led efforts to improve global health by developing rapid diagnostic tests. In addition to developing tests for COVID-19, the center has played a role in creating point-of-care tests for gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis, and participated in the clinical study for the first point-of-care diagnostic for molecular diagnosis of hepatitis C. Dr. Manabe completed her residency in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital and her fellowship in infectious diseases at its school of medicine before joining the Hopkins faculty in 1999. She lived in Uganda from 2007 to 2012, where a lack of diagnostic certainty and desire to prevent antimicrobial resistance led her to the field of diagnostic discovery. She also serves as the director of global health research and innovation at the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health.

2001

Michelle McMacken, executive director of Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine at NYC Health + Hospitals since 2022, was recognized as a 2025 Trailblazer in Healthcare by the City and State of New York for launching the municipal public health care system’s first Lifestyle Medicine Program. A primary care internal medicine physician, fellow of the American College of Physicians, and diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine and American Board of Lifestyle Medicine, Dr. McMacken joined NYC Health + Hospitals in 2004, where she directed the Adult Weight Management Program at Bellevue for 16 years. The interdisciplinary Lifestyle Medicine Program, which includes medical providers, dietitians, and health coaches, provides individual counseling, group educational sessions, produce deliveries, and other services to patients with chronic conditions such as Type 2 diabetes and hypertension. The team also includes community health workers who help address food insecurity and other health-related social needs. The program’s pilot phase demonstrated clinically and statistically significant improvements in cardiometabolic outcomes. She has recently overseen the program’s expansion to seven sites in the health system, spanning all five New York City boroughs.

2010

D. Tyler Coyle, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine (CUSOM), has been appointed assistant dean of admissions for the medical school. Additionally, he has been appointed co-director of the Division of Addiction Science, Prevention, and Treatment within CUSOM’s Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Coyle’s work focuses on the treatment of opioid use disorder, as well as training medical students to manage substance use disorders through standardized patient encounters.

Robert Sorabella has been appointed the surgical director of pediatric heart transplant and mechanical circulatory support at Children’s of Alabama. “Through a combination of acute mechanical support with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, long-term ventricular assist devices for both single ventricle and biventricular circulations, and complex cardiac transplantation, we are able to provide superb, individualized care to the children of our state and beyond,” he said in a news release announcing his appointment for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he is also an assistant professor of surgery. A graduate of Columbia College, Dr. Sorabella completed an integrated cardiothoracic surgery residency at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and a pediatric cardiac surgery fellowship at the University of Michigan. He is a dedicated surgeon-scientist investigating outcomes in congenital heart surgery, heart transplantation, and mechanical circulatory support.

2011

Sarah Russell, a primary care physician, has joined Nantucket Cottage Hospital. Dr. Russell grew up on Cape Cod and visited the island in her childhood. “I find it appealing to practice small-town medicine, with access to the resources that come with the relationship with a larger hospital network,” she said in a statement. Before arriving on Nantucket, she worked at the Fortrea Clinical Research Unit and SSM Dean Health Medical Group in Madison, Wisconsin. Her career also includes an internal medicine primary care practice in Brattleboro, Vermont. She trained in internal medicine at Brown/Rhode Island Hospital.