Our Team
Describe your team here.
Vincent Le graduated from Columbia College in 2021 majoring in music on the pre-medical track. Vincent ran the music therapy program at RCSS which consisted of two parts:
1) Combination of online and in-person volunteering of music as alternative medicine/therapy at local hospitals in NYC including Terence Cardinal Cooke, Mary Manning Walsh, Columbia Medical Center and Mount Sinai Hospital System. Restrictions were based on the accessibility of these medical centers/wards. Musicians come from the existing pool of Columbia and Barnard musicians from the Music Performance Program led by Professor Magdalena Stern-Baczewska.
2) Research project exploring the benefits of music therapy on alleviating stress-related complications in Intensive Care Units - relevant to the crisis of COVID-19, which overwhelmed ICU’s across the country. Vincent also helped plan the weekly lunches as the Executive Director of Internal Affairs. He was the music director for the Columbia Kingsmen A Capella group, and played alto sax in the Columbia Big Band and small jazz ensembles. Check out his jazz album Acacia on Spotify and classical chamber music project on Youtube: https://linktr.ee/vincentlemusicValerie Pinkerton graduated from Columbia College in 2012 with a triple-concentration in environmental biology, economics, and political science. In partnership with the RCSS, she served as House Coordinator for Greenborough, the environmental special interest house on campus, and as the environmental programming director for the 2010 Millennium Campus Conference. Valerie received a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 2018 and currently works as a program analyst on the environment portfolio at the Robertson Foundation. She lives in Brooklyn.
Tony Qian (CC’17) is a Physics Major and Math-Computer-Science joint double major. Tony has worked on Electric Propulsion at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Nuclear Fusion at Tri Alpha Energy. Tony has also researched Biophysics in Forschungszentrum Juelich as part of Germany’s DAAD Scholars program, and studied Math in Moscow with NSF funding. Tony is now pursuing a PhD in Physics at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
Beyond Physics, Tony has also worked as an Archivist for the Center of CORE Curriculum, tracing the history of Science in the CORE through pre-war syllabi. Tony was reciepient of the Harriman Foundation fellowship for Russian language study. His hobbies include Music, Fencing, and Astronomy.
Feel free to reach out ([email protected]) if there is anything I can do for you.
Theodore Nelson (RCSS Intern-Scholar, RCSS Treasurer) graduated from Columbia University in 2024 with a computer science major and biology concentration.
Joining the RCSS in 2022, he designed an introductory wet-lab biology research course for high school students, based on his own work in long-read sequencing analysis. The lab teaches long-read, short-read and Sanger sequencing technologies, with students verifying novel alternative splice variant predictions within the human transcriptome.
Alongside Dennis Zhang (CC ’24), he taught this program during the 2022-2023 academic year at the Columbia University Roger Lehecka Double Discovery Center, providing the first post-pandemic in-person STEM programming at the center. He advised new scholars throughout the 2023-2024 academic year, to refine the curriculum, to develop independent administrative structures, and to continue providing underserved students their first opportunity to perform research.
The program has been highly rated by students and has received funding from the Columbia University Department of Biomedical Engineering, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Stephens Family Charitable Foundation.
He concurrently served as the RCSS treasurer for the 2023-2024 academic year.
He is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Churchill Scholarship and the Charles M. Rolker Jr. Prize.
Related Publication(s)
Nelson, T.M.; Zhang, D.; Sorid, S.; Chang, T.; Bajaj, N.; Viola, J.; Heckelman, L.; Pollack, R. Abstract 2366 Glass Half Full or Empty: Illuminating the Human Transcriptome - Inspiring Underserved High School Students with an Experiential Biology Laboratory Research Experience. Journal of Biological Chemistry 2024, 300, 107113, doi:10.1016/j.jbc.2024.107113.
Nelson, T.M.; Glass Half Full or Empty: Illuminating the Human Transcriptome. RCSS Journal of Undergraduate Research, Vol. 5, Pg. 10, 2023, [link]
Nipa, T.; Nan, C.; Morales, H.; Boodhan, N.; Nipon, S.; Ayodele, H.; Genao, K.; Kone, R.; Miami, J.; Kim, P.; Safa, S.; Postler, T.S.; Zhang, D.J.; Nelson, T.M. Illuminating the Human Transcriptome: An Interactive Biology Lab Experience. Columbia University Roger Lehecka Double Discovery Center. 2022, [link]
Nelson, T.M.; Ghosh, S.; Postler, T.S. L-RAPiT: A Cloud-Based Computing Pipeline for the Analysis of Long-Read RNA Sequencing Data. IJMS 2022, 23, 15851, doi:10.3390/ijms232415851.
Other work(s)
Tess Cersonsky is a current MS1 at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. She received her BS in biomedical engineering and music from the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Columbia University in 2017, where she was an active member of the Research Cluster on Science and Subjectivity, serving as an administrator and scholar. With Dr. Pollack, she created the currently-running course, “Life at the End of Life: Palliative Medicine and Service,” which built upon the service-based learning experiences she had as an intern at Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center.
Tess is interested in the intersections between patient experiences and cognitive change, which she explores through computer science modeling. Her post-graduate work at Yale University also looked into ideas of demoralization, enfeeblement, and caregiver burden. She plans to pursue a residency in either neurology or neurosurgery and hopes to devote a career to academic medicine. She is a classically-trained opera singer and enjoys using music and art to engage patients in geriatrics and memory units.
Sylvester Benson is a senior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavior at Columbia School of General Studies. Sylvester is passionate about clinical research, addressing health disparities, and social justice advocacy. As an undergraduate researcher at Columbia Neurosurgery and Neuropathology, he studies therapeutic interventions for glioblastomas (GBM), the most aggressive malignant brain tumor in humans. He is also a visiting research scholar at MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Harvard Medical School where he completed research fellowships and internships. In Fall 2020, he was appointed to the Research Cluster in the Historical Study of Race, Inequality, and Health where he researched the socio-cultural and political history of pandemics. Sylvester is a member of Globe-Med at Columbia, the Columbia-Bronx Oncology Living Daily as well as the inaugural cohort of Columbia’s Justice and Pandemics Preparedness Academy. As an RCSS Scholar, Sylvester serves as a coordinator of Columbia's Black Undergraduate Mentorship Program in Biology (BUMP Biology) geared towards supporting black undergraduates in biological and biomedical sciences with scientific research experience and career mentorship. BUMP runs under the auspices of the department of Biological Sciences and the Black Alumni Council and is supported by the Addressing Racism Seed Grant Initiative of the office of Dr. Dennis Mitchell, Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement. In addition to BUMP, Sylvester is also working on Letters To Strangers at Columbia, a newly emerging club, dedicated to supporting individuals struggling with mental health through writing and distribution of heart-felt letters.
Susan L. Rosenthal, PhD, ABPP is a Tenured Professor of Medical Psychology (in Pediatrics
and Psychiatry) and Vice Chair of Faculty Development within the Department of Pediatrics at
Columbia University Irving Medical Center.Dr. Rosenthal’s clinical research has focused on the promotion of sexual health and vaccine
acceptability. She uses both qualitative and quantitative methodologies and has had extramural
funding from the National Institutes of Health and other organizations. She has served as a
consultant on adolescent health to industry and groups such as the World Health Organization,
and has consulted on faculty development to other academic institutions and organizations. Her
scholarly work has resulted in over 200 publications.Sungtae Yoon is a graduate of the School of General Studies majoring in Biological Sciences. As the executive officer of the Terence Cardinal Cooke At Your Service volunteer program, he is serving as a liaison between Terence Cardinal Cooke (TCC) Department of Volunteer Services and its Medical Department, and the Columbia RCSS AYS program. As an intern at RCSS, he is involved in developing an international exchange program for Columbia undergraduates and students from Griffith University in Australia, with the goal of facilitating a global perspective of end-of-life care. He is also contributing to a research project at TCC that is studying how recreational therapy affects Huntington's Disease patients' self-perception of health. Alongside his work with TCC and RCSS, he is also active as a volunteer Korean language medical interpreter for Mount Sinai Hospitals. He graduated as valedictorian.
Sophia is a sophomore in Columbia College majoring in biochemistry. She enjoys new experiences related to molecular biology and neuroscience, and has found an interesting convergence between these disciplines in the realm of genetics. With RCSS, she teaches high schoolers from New York City about the human genome and lab techniques used in DNA sequencing (find her RCSS project here). This project fosters connections within the community while sparking scientific curiosity in young students.
Skylar is a senior at Columbia College graduating in 2021. She is an English major from northern New York. She is the fall TA for the course Life at the End of Life and on the board of the At Your Service Club. At Columbia, she is a member of the Native American Council, Columbia Outdoor Orientation Program, the Multicultural Recruitment Committee and a tutor at the Double Discovery Center.
Shalom Omollo is a senior in Columbia College studying Psychology and Public Health. Previously, she ran the Marginalization in Medicine conference. This semester, she is continuing the Sunday Dinner series which connects students with professors, researchers, and activists in an informal way.
Sandy Zeng is a student at Columbia College graduating in 2021. She is studying psychology and interested in narrative medicine. Sandy is also a ballet dancer with Columbia Ballet Collaborative and Columbia Repertory Ballet. During her time volunteering at Terrance Cardinal Cooke, she recognized how much the residents enjoyed new events and many residents had a great appreciation for art. Through RCSS, Sandy has been able to bring more mediums of art to TCCC, by recruiting dancers in her student dance groups and putting together a ballet showcase to rave reviews of the residents and faculty.
Samia Abedin, a junior at Columbia College, is majoring in Medicine, Literature, and Society on the pre-medical track. She is interested in studying the intersection between culture and human rights with medicine on a global scale. In Fall 2016, her experiences with Contemporary Civilization and the RCSS course AMST UN3930: Life at the End of Life has made her think a lot about emotions in relation to the soul. Her long term companion (LTC), an elderly resident, at TCC has left a lasting impression on her. Despite his approaching the end of his life, he lives immortality through the life she lives, the lives of those who she has shared his stories with, and those she hopes to continue sharing his stories with. As much as she’s impacted him, he has impacted her. This symbiotic relationship between her and her LTC inspires her current efforts to create an intergenerational housing opportunity between Columbia’s undergrad students and elderly residents of a long term care facility.
Taught at Columbia 1961-2006; also taught at Yale, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, NYU; the Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College and Lincoln College, Oxford (directed the program at Lincoln three times); directed NEH Summer Seminars for College Teachers at Columbia 1982, 1985, 1989.
Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America; Guggenheim and ACLS Fellow; NEH Senior Fellow and Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center at Bellagio, Lake Como, Italy. Biennial Chaucer Lecturer, New Chaucer Society, Sorbonne (Paris), 1998.
Member, Board of Directors, August Aichhorn Center, New York and Brooklyn
Member, Board of Directors, Columbia University Community Impact. (Since 2000 I have been centrally involved in the Community Impact College Road program, as founder of College Prep, founder and co-ordinator, with Dean Roosevelt Montas, of the Core and Community Program, and founder of the Mentoring program for college-bound adults.)Robert Remez is a professor of psychology at Barnard College. His teaching focuses on the relationships among perception, cognition and language. Since 1985, Professor Remez's research has been supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders under the project "Sensory and Perceptual Factors in Spoken Communication." One line of his research examines the perceptual organization of speech and seeks to explain how listeners can follow speech amid the sounds that strike the ear. In a second line of research, he studies the perceptible differences between individual talkers and the phonetic and qualitative aspects of these indexical properties.
Robert Pollack, Emeritus Professor of Biological Sciences, graduated from Columbia College in 1961 and joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1978. His laboratory research focused on the potential clinical utility of his discovery of that cancer cells were capable of stable reversion from the oncogenic phenotype (see Pollack et al. 1968, PNAS). Other laboratories have begun to apply his discovery to the development of novel forms of cancer chemotherapy. As a result, his early research continues to be referenced in research articles (see Joo et al. 2023, Advanced Science).
He was a Postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Howard Green at NYU Medical Center from 1966-1969; a research scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1969-70; a senior scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory from 1970 to 1975; and an associate professor of microbiology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1975 until he joined the faculty of the Biological Sciences Department as a Professor in 1978.
In 1982 he became the first Jewish Dean of an Ivy College, when he was chosen to be the twelfth Dean of Columbia College. As Dean, he oversaw the successful transition of Columbia college to a full coeducation while also increasing the diversity of the College through fundraising to support a full financial aid policy.
He stepped down and returned to his laboratory and his Professorship in 1989. His teaching focused on the application of knowledge of the natural world to problems that require decisions that cannot be based solely on such data-driven knowledge. Beginning in the late 1990s, he set aside lab work in order to write a series of books (see Signs of Life, The Missing Moment, and The Faith of Biology and the Biology of Faith).
In 2010 he became the fifth Director of the University Seminars, and in 2016 he established the Research Cluster on Science and Society within the Columbia University Center for Science and Society.
As an Emeritus Professor, he remains active as an author and an advisor to students in the RCSS, as well as continuing to co-chair the University Seminar on Science and Subjectivity, and he continues to learn from his colleagues of all ages. He may be reached at [email protected].
Rishi Goyal is Director of the Medicine, Literature and Society major at ICLS.
Dr. Goyal's research, writing and teaching focuses on the reciprocal transformations that result when new ideas about health, disease and the body find forms of expression in fiction and memoirs. His most recent work explores the political, aesthetic, and social dimensions of the representation of physical trauma in literature. His writing has appeared in The Living Handbook of Narratology, Aktuel Forskning. Litteratur, Kultur og Medier, and The Los Angeles Review of Books among other places.
Dr. Goyal received his MD (2001) and his PhD in English and Comparative Literature (2010) from Columbia University. He was Chief Resident in Emergency Medicine at New York-Presbyterian (2009-10). Before returning to Columbia in 2012, Dr. Goyal was Director of Medical Humanism and Assistant Professor of English Literature and Emergency Medicine at the University of Arizona where he was named Teacher of the Year (2011).
He is currently an Attending Physician in the Emergency Department at Columbia University Medical Center and a Visiting Professor at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense.Ralitsa Kalfas recently graduated from Columbia College majoring in Medicine, Literature and Society and Hispanic Cultures. Ralitsa was a volunteer with the Terence Cardinal Cooke At Your Service program. She is now working with the RCSS to conduct research within the health care center’s Huntington’s Disease unit. She is developing a research project in the Teacher’s College Neurorehabilitation Lab that will explore the intersections between Huntington’s Disease, recreational therapy and narrative medicine through the stories of residents, their loves ones and TCC staff. Ralitsa is starting at Public Health Solutions as the Program Coordinator for Healthcare Community Partnerships. She is enthusiastic to work towards reconciling the fragmentation in healthcare for the most vulnerable populations in New York through multi-sector strategic partnerships, resource consolidation and tech innovation.
Raisa is a senior at Columbia College graduating in 2021, studying Neuroscience and Behavior. She is from Queens, NY. As a RCSS intern, she is working on the Reflections on COVID-19 Project to provide Columbia students and faculty a safe space to virtually discuss the impact on COVID-19, specifically on the issues of racism, xenophobia, and health disparities.
Raisa is passionate about mental health and disability advocacy, research, and teaching. She has served as the President of Active Minds and the Vice President of Synapse to advocate for support for individuals with mental illnesses and brain injury. She has co-launched Unmasked: a mental health peer support community app. She is part of the COVID-19 Student Service Corps. She is also an Educator for the Lang Youth Medical Program and teaches FGLI 7th grade students from the Washington Heights community on health sciences. In her free time, she enjoys reading books, watching Netflix and anime, taking photos, and trying new food.Rachel E. Chung, recipient of the coveted Tang Research Grant in 2016, is Lecturer in Disciplines in the Music Department at Columbia University.
For many years, as the Associate Director of University Committee on Asia & the Middle East (UCAME) at Columbia, she worked closely with Wm. Theodore de Bary to develop and implement new Global Core courses that span East Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern, and Western civilizations, most notably Nobility & Civility I and II, and Nature & Human Nature I and II. As Associate Director she was also instrumental in reaching out to the community of leading colleges and universities around the world to build international consensus and cooperation for global core curricula, including with Chinese Association for Liberal Education and its cohort of over 400 higher education institutions in China. As Lecturer with research interests in pedagogy of interculturation and Neo-Confucian cultural and intellectual history, she developed two new seminars, Friendship in Asian & Western Civilizations with Prof. Allan Silver, and Ritual & Music in East Asian Traditions, as well as taught Core courses in Music and EALAC Departments.
Dr. Chung received her B.M. and M.M. degrees from the Juilliard School in New York, and her M.A., M. Phil, and Ph.D. in Historical Musicology from Columbia in 2002. Having published numerous articles, including the "Song of Ch'unhyang" for Wisdom in East Asian Classics, she is currently working on three books, The Pedagogy of Confucius; Interculturation: Rethinking the Future of Democracy with James Jinhong Kim; and Song Hyon's "Model for Study of Music": A Culminating Treatise of Neo-Confucian Political Philosophy. She has been on the Advisory Board of RCSS since 2014.
Priscilla is a Columbia College alumna with a degree in biological sciences. Through RCSS and the Columbia University College of Dental Medicine (CDM), she worked to decrease health inequity by partaking in community events revolving around oral health education and preventative care. These initiatives mainly targeted children in low-income neighborhoods in Upper Manhattan. She has extended her involvement to raise awareness for dental advocacy and public health issues for Columbia’s American Student Dental Association (ASDA). As an advocacy fellow, she creates infographics and presentations on issues such as the opioid epidemic and LOAN Act. After graduation, she hopes to continue her RCSS project with Columbia CDM.
During her time at Columbia, Phalaen (CC'23) studied Neuroscience and Public Health. As an RCSS intern, she was inspired by the class "(Y)our Longer Life" to start the Intergenerational Narrative Medicine Workshops. These workshops brought together a small cohort of undergraduate students and older members of the Morningside Heights community in conversations through the lens of narrative medicine. She was moved by the heart, perspective, and vulnerability of the participants and thankful for all the support she received in starting the project and its continuation after her graduation.
During her last year as an RCSS intern, Phalaen also volunteered at Terence Cardinal Cooke (TCC) through the At Your Service project, and has many fond memories of getting to know the residents. She is also working on bringing music to the residents through coordinating volunteer opportunities for musicians at a local arts high school to bring their music to TCC. As a musician herself, she is excited to see how these performances and connections through music could comfort residents.
She is so grateful for the opportunities and connections RCSS has given her during her time at Columbia. The independence and support she has received has given her the confidence to work with peers through organizations like the Columbia Neuroscience Society to coordinate other new independent projects with support from public outreach grants from Zuckerman Institute. She hopes that whatever she ends up doing in the near future, she can continue to have a positive impact on those around her.
Olger C. Twyner, III, is Executive Director of Community Impact (CI) at Columbia, a non-profit with a mission to advance the public good in Upper Manhattan through volunteer and service initiatives in the areas of youth achievement, adult education, emergency services, and health.
Olger earned a B.A. in History from Jackson State University, a J.D. from The Ohio State University College of Law, and an M.B.A. in Public and Non-Profit Management from Columbia Business School. He has worked with a variety of legal and non-profit organizations, including Southeast Mississippi Legal Services, the Ford Foundation, Mississippi Center for Justice, and Row New York. In higher education, Olger has also been engaged in community outreach and public service initiatives at Columbia Business School, NYU Law School, Double Discovery Center, and Xavier University of Louisiana.
A Harlem resident, Olger serves on Columbia’s Community Advisory Council and is an ex officio board member of the Morningside Area Alliance.
Nicole B. Wallack (B.A., McGill University, 1988; M.Sc., University of Edinburgh, 1989; Ph.D., New York University, 2004), is the Director of Columbia University’s Undergraduate Writing Program in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, where she has worked since 2003. At Columbia, she teaches seminars on writing pedagogy, American literature and film, Creative Nonfiction, and undergraduate writing courses. She has been an Associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College since 1998, and leads workshops for educators across grade-levels, disciplines, institutional, and national contexts on a variety of topics related to writing-based teaching.
Her scholarship focuses on the history, pedagogy, and aesthetics of the American essay; rhetoric and composition; teacher education; educational history; standardized testing; and knowledge transfer. She also writes essays on the literature and film of city life. Her articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in several collections as well as Fourth Genre, Essay Daily, and Public Books. Her book, Crafting Presence: The American Essay and the Future of Writing Studies (Utah State University Press, spring 2017), offers theoretical and pedagogical arguments for rethinking the role of essay writing in high school and college in the age of the Common Core State Standards and the Framework for Success in Post-Secondary Writing. She is the Vice President of the Council of Writing Program Administrator’s Metro-Affiliate group in New York; she has served on the Committee for Contingent Labor in the Profession, and currently works with the Editorial Collaborative of The Profession for the Modern Language Association.Naomi Rosenkranz is the Associate Director of the Center for Science and Society and its research cluster, the Making and Knowing Project. She oversees the development and administration of the Center and its research clusters, Scholars, grant programs, activities, and events. For the Making and Knowing Project, she serves as the main administrative liaison between the various research, editorial, and digital activities of the Project staff, collaborators, and participants. She supports the historical reconstruction research, oversees the Project’s chemical laboratory, and maintains the digital collaboration systems. She studied physics at Barnard College (class of 2015), concentrating her research experiences in materials science and engineering (including synthesis and characterization of superconductors and photoconductive properties of organic nanorods). In 2014-15, she served as the inaugural Science Resident in Conservation with Columbia’s Ancient Ink Lab, identifying and characterizing ancient carbon-based inks. She continued her investigation of inks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, working with the departments of Scientific Research and Paper Conservation to examine medieval iron-tannate black inks through recipe reconstructions and spectral analysis of museum objects.
Naazanene Vatan is a senior in Columbia College double majoring in Biology and Medicine, Literature and Society. Naazanene first got involved in RCSS through her work with the Terence Cardinal Cooke At-Your-Service volunteer program, where she both volunteered at the nursing home and organized educational reflection sessions for the program’s volunteers. This summer, Naazanene worked as an RCSS intern in Mumbai, India to study intergenerational support networks and the concept of generativity in Mumbai’s deprived urban contexts. More broadly, she is interested in applying what we learn from the histories of medicine and public health to both clinical care and health policy solutions. On campus, Naazanene is also involved in biomedical engineering research at CUMC and is a resident advisor in East Campus.
Michelle Yao is a senior in Columbia College majoring in Biology and a concentration in Hispanic Studies. Alongside Sabrina Salam, she is leading a project to develop a course in Medical Spanish Conversation that enables undergraduate students interested in the intersection of medicine and the Spanish language to improve their cultural competency and communication as future professionals in healthcare and other related fields.
Melody Gomez is a senior at the School of General General Studies studying Neuroscience and Behavior. She handles the logistics of event planning and coordinating group involvement for RCSS. She is also a point of contact for prospective candidates. In her free time, she enjoys painting, music, running, and baking.
Melissa Begg is Dean of the Columbia School of Social Work and Professor of Social Work and Biostatistics. As a population health scientist, her scholarship has focused on developing the strongest possible evidence base for human health and well-being. She formerly served as Vice Provost for Academic Programs for Columbia University and Co-Director of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research.
Throughout her career, she has focused on convening interdisciplinary scientific teams, developing innovative curricula, creating mentorship programs, and enhancing diversity in the research workforce. In 2006, Dean Begg received the University-wide Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Fairfield University and a Doctor of Science in Biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Melinda Miller is the Associate Director of the Center for Science and Society and Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience program, where she oversees the development and administration of the Center and its research clusters, Scholars, grant programs, activities, and events. Melinda received a Ph.D. in life sciences (neuroscience concentration) from The Rockefeller University and a BS in neural science and psychology from New York University. Her research examined individual differences in the brain and behavior in response to stress, which she studied in both animal models and human populations. Prior to joining Columbia University in 2015, she worked as a senior program manager at the New York Academy of Sciences, where she helped to develop, organize, and raise funds for scientific conferences and cross-disciplinary public events.
Dr. Marya Pollack received her MD degree from New York University and her MPH in Maternal and Child Health from Columbia University. She joined the faculty in the Division of Psychiatry in 2001 as an attending in the New York State Psychiatric Institute-Washington Heights Community Service. In addition, she is an attending physician at New York Presbyterian, and an Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at the Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Dr. Marya Pollack was honored in 2016 by membership in the Virginia Apgar Academy of Medical Educators, and again in 2019 by being named a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
Marsha Darbouze is a senior in Columbia College majoring in Neuroscience and Behavior. She is from Haiti and the Bronx, NY. Marsha is passionate about addressing disparities in college preparation and STEM education. As an RCSS scholar, Marsha is working on creating a course to help first-generation, low-income premed first-year students acclimate to Columbia and thrive in their pursuit of careers in medicine. She hopes to create long-lasting mentoring relationships for first-year students and provide opportunities for early career exposure. Outside of RCSS, she is involved in the Questbridge Scholars Network, the Undergraduate Multicultural Recruitment Committee, and Camp Kesem at Columbia. In her free time, Marsha enjoys arts and crafts, baking, and playing violin.
Mariel Sander graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Neuroscience and English on the premedical track. She served as President of Symposium, Secretary of the Hiking Club, and worked at the Writing Center. As part of RCSS, she started two programs—Symposium Seminars, a set of workshops aimed at helping students build seminar skills to succeed in the Core Curriculum, and the Tricentennial Project (now the project of another student!). She was recognized as a Senior Marshal for Leadership and Excellence in her senior year.RCSS was integral to helping her develop the confidence to believe it was possible for her as a young person to make a change in her community. She will always be grateful for the wonderful faculty and students she met during her time with RCSS. Despite initial skepticism, she wholeheartedly believes in the RCSS model and its ability to empower students even beyond their RCSS projects.
While in New York City during the COVID pandemic, she volunteered as an EMT with the Central Park Medical Unit, as a vaccinator with the Medical Reserve Corps, and as a morgue technician in Brooklyn. Currently, Mariel is the Global Engagement Officer at the Healthy Brains Global Initiative, an organization aiming to change the way mental and neurological health research is conducted. She also volunteers as the Head of University Programs at Generation Mental Health, a nonprofit aiming to build capacity in youth to participate in global mental health work.
She encourages any students or faculty in RCSS to reach out if they want to connect!
Dr. Magdalena Stern-Baczewska [baCHEVska] joined Columbia University's full-time faculty as Director of the Music Performance Program in 2014.
Born in Poland, Baczewska has enjoyed a multi-faceted career as a pianist, harpsichordist, educator, recording artist, producer, and an administrator, currently serving as Director of the Music Performance Program and Lecturer in Music at Columbia University. The press describes her as a “world-class” musician (The American Record Guide), and a “player of taste and admirable sensitivity” (Palm Beach Arts Paper). Her performances have been praised as “eloquent & technically flawless” (The Washington Post), “highly sophisticated and truly admirable” (The Weekend, New York). She has concertized worldwide, performing with the San Francisco Symphony, China National Symphony, and Macao Symphony, among others. She has appeared in concert with violinist Joshua Bell, as well as with maestro Tan Dun, with whom she has enjoyed an extensive collaboration. Magdalena is the first pianist since Rosalyn Tureck to perform Bach’s Goldberg Variations twice in one evening, on the harpsichord, then on piano. Her 2016 album, containing works of Chopin and Szymanowski (Paraty), and has been applauded for its “imagination and spontaneity” (Jan den Kruijiff, Musikalifeiten), and “magnificent, unique voice” which “ stylistically never falters “ (Donald Isler, Classical Music Guide Online).
Baczewska is a laureate of international piano competitions, as well as the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Polish Minister of Culture. She holds Bachelor and Master’s degrees from Mannes College The New School for Music, under the tutelage of Jerome Rose, and her doctoral degree from Manhattan School of Music, in the studio of Constance Keene. Her doctoral dissertation, In Search of Bach’s Cantabile: The Role and Aspects of Oratory and Singing in Keyboard Interpretation was published by Lambert Academic Publishing.
Baczewska is a full-time faculty member of Columbia University, where she teaches Music Humanities and conducts a weekly performance master class. She has given piano master classes worldwide, in the Central Conservatory (Beijing, China), International Keyboard Institute and Festival (NYC); Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, to name a few. She also gives long-distance master classes using Remote Lesson Yamaha Disklavier technology. In her spare time, Magdalena volunteers as an instructor of music appreciation online, reaching out to homebound seniors via Virtual Senior Center program.
As Artistic Director of BlueSleep Music, Baczewska produced music for MetroNaps EnergyPod®, popularized by Google. Her best-selling albums Music for Dreams were conceived with BlueSleep®, a medical team specialized in research and treatment of sleep disorders.
Baczewska is Artistic Director of the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Piano Competition in New York City, and member of the board of the International Keyboard Institute and Festival.
Baczewska is a Yamaha Artist. She enjoys traveling, dancing in silent discos and learning new languages, most recently having taken up Mandarin.
MagdalenaNYC.com
Lucas Campa is an Economics-Philosophy major at Columbia College, graduating in 2023. As his RCSS project, Lucas has worked on the Tricentennial Project, which seeks to bridge generational gaps in conversations about climate change and foster undergraduate engagement in climate action. He is currently in charge of running the finances for the RCSS. Besides academics, Lucas also enjoys entrepreneurship, film, and soccer.
Dr. Lisa Dolling is a philosopher of science specializing in the philosophy of quantum theory and the intersection of science and the humanities. Until recently she served as Provost and Senior Vice President and Professor of Philosophy at Rosemont College (PA). Prior to that she held senior administrative positions at Manhattanville College , Stevens Institute of Technology, and St. John's University, where she directed a project in Science and Religion. Dr. Dolling holds a B.A. from Manhattanville College, an M.A. from Fordham University, and an M.Phil. and Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, all in Philosophy. She also earned a Certificate of Completion from the Higher Institute of Philosophy in Leuven, Belgium (KUL). Dr. Dolling's areas of teaching and research include (in addition to the Philosophy of Science), Aesthetics, Philosophy of Film, the History of the Liberal Arts, and Feminist Theory.
Lina is a sophomore in Columbia College majoring in Biology and Medical Humanities. At RCSS, she coordinates the At Your Service volunteer program at Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center, a sub-acute rehabilitation center and skilled nursing facility. She also helps run the Intergenerational Narrative Medicine Workshop project, which aims to foster connections between those of different generations through narrative medicine discussions.
Lili Yamasaki is the current Director of the RCSS, as well as the Director of the MA in Biotechnology Program, for which she teaches two core courses, BIOL GU4300 Drugs & Disease and BIOL GU4305 Seminar in Biotechnology, and a laboratory training course BIOL S4515 in the Summer semester. She advises all of the MA in Biotechnology students, helps with laboratory placement and provides career counseling in a range of careers associated with biotechnology. Having previously run a cancer research laboratory in which she constructed mutant mouse models to understand how cancer and development are interwoven processes, she has a deep understanding of what laboratory skills and analysis are necessary for entrance into and productivity in a research laboratory. She serves on the Departmental DEI Committee and the STEM Departments DEI Committee and is deeply committed to helping URM and FGLI students gain access to laboratory skills and career counseling, which are so fundamental to a student’s success in pursuing a scientific path.
Liana (CC’23) was a Medical Humanities major. Currently, she is a matriculating medical student at NYU Long Island School of Medicine. She loves writing and drawing children's books, and works on the Reading Equity and Diversity in Science (READS) Project. With volunteers from Chribble (https://chribblecolumbia.wixsite.com/website), the READS Project creates and distributes books to children in book desserts.
Dr. Moss-Salentijn is the Zegarelli Professor of Dental Medicine (in Anatomy and Cell Biology)
and the Vice Dean for Curriculum Innovation and Interprofessional Education in the College of
Dental Medicine, Columbia University in New York.
She earned the DDS and PhD degrees at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. From 1966
– 1968 she was a member of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Utrecht. She has been
a member of the faculty of Columbia University since 1968, where she has served as Assistant
Professor, Associate Professor and Professor in the College of Dental Medicine. She was
Director of the Dental Radiology Unit from 1980 through 1986, Director of the Graduate
Program on Dental Science from 1986 until now, and has served since 1990 in various
administrative ranks from Assistant Dean for Postdoctoral Programs to Vice Dean of Academic
Affairs.
Her research has focused on growth and development of the skeleton, much in collaboration with
Faculty members from SEAS, as well as on the structure of enamel, dentin, pulp and salivary
glands. Recently, she has developed teaching innovations, including AR and VR methods of
administering anesthesia for dental procedures (with Prof. S. Feiner), and interprofessional
teledentistry for elderly, homebound patients.
Dr. Moss-Salentijn has co-authored 6 textbooks and has published more than 80 papers and
chapters.Leeza Hirt is a Columbia College senior studying history and completing the pre-medical track. She has been working with RCSS since Fall 2015, when she co-founded the Faculty Fridays program with Netana Markovitz, which brings professors to the Kraft Center on Friday nights for informal sessions with students. This semester, she will be founding the Columbia Humanities and Medicine Society. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, writing, and playing the piano.
Krystal Cruz is the Elected 2022-2024 Northeast Regional National Council Representative to the United Nations Foundation’s United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA). She is particularly inspired by Columbia University’s Arnold A. Saltzman Professor of International and Public Affairs—Edward C. Luck (1948-2021); Prof. Luck (SIPA'72) served as the UNA-USA President (1984-1994) and became known for his work on the Responsibility to Protect, a doctrine that aims to prevent and halt genocide and other mass atrocities.
She is completing her dissertation in the Research Group on Disparities in Health at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Education, Health and Psychology in the Department of Health and Behavior Studies and is graduating in 2023.
She studies the biopsychosocial model as a theoretical framework to explore critical racial health disparities related to maternal morbidity and mortality, perinatal mental health and substance use disorders, the influence of neighborhood social conditions and built environmental factors on psychosocial stress and wellbeing during gestation, intrauterine environmental influences across the life course, and global mental health.
For her RCSS Project, she is exploring a 4+ year historical timeline of events that occurred from the film screening in Schermerhorn Hall on February 27th, 2018 of A Dangerous Idea: Eugenics, Genetics and the American Dream documentary about genetics, eugenics, and social inequality in the United States, featuring Professor Bob Pollack as a key expert; to the unanimous historic board of trustees vote to remove the name of a eugenicist off of a campus building on July 15, 2020; to the ultimate Call-To-Action to rename the building formerly known as Thorndike Hall to Dr. Edmund W. Gordon Tower—after one of Columbia’s first ever African American tenured professors. Notably, Professor Gordon’s scholarship both dismantled the concept of a Hierarchy of Human Race as well as informed the Supreme Court about the harmful effects of school segregation—leading to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965.
She is honored to join RCSS as a visiting scholar particularly given RCSS’s historical roots linked to The Earth Institute’s Center for the Study of Science and Religion with prior locations and operations occurring within the Department of Religion, the Martin Luther King building of The Riverside Church as well as Knox Hall of The Union Institutional memory of RCSS especially resonates, as her dissertation committee member, Sociomedical Sciences Professor Robert E. Fullilove, Dean of Community and Minority Affairs at the Mailman School of Public Health sowed transformational seeds of inspiration and cultivated a strong conviction within her to conduct research and promote scholarship imbued with liberation theology. This metamorphosis occurred during class trips in Autumn 2015 to the City of Orange, New Jersey Township applying community based participatory action research methods towards a neighborhood environmental scan with local community members in East Orange, NJ in collaboration with HANDS, Inc. and University of Orange.
She is also honored to be the doctoral student of Professor Barbara Wallace (Princeton ’80), her academic mentor, and the first African American woman to move through the ranks and gain tenure in the history of Teachers College, Columbia University in Morningside Heights, doing so in 1994. For quite some time, Professor Wallace was the only African American female tenured Full Professor at TC and her tireless advocacy for institutional change informed the TC President's 1999 Taskforce Report which led to the establishment of the Vice President’s Office for Diversity and Community Affairs. Accordingly, Professor Noah Pizmony-Levy Drezner, in tandem with Professor Wallace and Professor Celia Oyler, catalyzed the resurgence of campus-wide morale and momentum that led to the ultimate removal of a eugenicist's name off of the campus building. Throughout her academic studies, she has participated in the following extracurricular activities: Chairperson of the Office of University Life Interschool Governing Board; Columbia University Senator serving on the Student Affairs, Libraries and Rules committees; Office of University Life Race, Ethnicity & Inclusion/Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging committee member, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Students of Color Alliance commencement co-chair, The Roger Lehecka Double Discovery Center mentor, founding member of the School of Education, Health and Psychology’s Diversity and Community Affairs committee, she is the founding president of the United Nations Association of the United States of America Columbia University-wide Chapter; she is also founder of the Columbia Orthodox Student Association (COSA).
Kimia Heydari is a John Jay Scholar and studies English and Biology. Alongside Ellie Hansen, she organizes a series of seminars with authors who write extensively about their own experience within scientific research. Relatedly, she has created the course, "Rhetorics of science," which is slated to be offered under the Center for Science and Society and the comparative literature department in spring 2021. When she is not in a laboratory, Kimia does scholarly work on ethics within biomedical research: she collaborates on a long-term project with bioethicists from the National Institute of Health and has also written about vaccine trials and current hesitancies for publications on- and off- campus.
Keylin Escobar is a junior in Columbia College studying Biophysics and Music. As a member of the RCSS, she designs and helps run the RCSS Journal of Undergraduate Research while working on establishing a social media presence for the RCSS. In her free time, Keylin enjoys playing the violin, drawing, and going down rabbit holes to try and find the answers to any questions that come to mind.
Kaylon Cannon is a graduate of Columbia University (New York, New York) with a B.A. in English & Comparative Literature. She takes a special interest in the blues epistemology & black geographies.
Karolina Sadowska is a senior in Columbia College, studying neuroscience and public health. As an RCSS intern, Karolina will be working together with Kaylon Cannon to organize the second edition of the Marginalization in Medicine conference and she will be also conducting her own exploratory project entitled “Private Etiological Beliefs and Causal Attributions Related to Mental Illness”.
Karolina is currently working as a Research Assistant at the Global Mental Health Programs and wants to pursue a career at the intersection of clinical psychiatry and public health. Determined to destigmatize mental health and create support communities on campus, she is a part of the Active Minds, the Mental Health Task Force, and the Columbia-JED Initiative. Karolina is involved in the Seniors for Columbia Fund and the Polish Student Society, and she is serving as a Peer Advisor in the Department of Psychology as well as a Peer Academic Skills Consultant at the Berick Center for Student Advising.
Joseph is a senior studying Civil Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He is active in both the American Society of Civil Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers on campus. As a student intern with RCSS, he is working alongside Andrea and Kristopher on different cultures' interpretations of constellations and their evolutions through time and human migration.
Jocelyn (SEAS ’23) studied Biomedical Engineering and Psychology during her time at Columbia. Growing up, Jocelyn spent her time in Shantou, China and Toronto, Canada before attending boarding school in Windsor, Connecticut. As an RCSS intern, she was the teaching assistant for the palliative seminar Life at the End of Life with Dr. Craig Blinderman.
As she graduates, her time in the RCSS will be one of her fondest memories, including the students, guest speakers, and staff at the Terrence Cardinal Cooke nursing home whom she shared her time in LATEOL with as well as RCSS members and professors whom she enjoyed catching up with at monthly faculty house lunches. She will also remember the delicious food served by the kind staff at faculty house, especially the much needed coffee at 1pm before afternoon lectures.
After Columbia, Jocelyn will be spending two years as an engineer and research assistant at the Columbia University Fertility Center, finding creative ways to improve fertility medicine from the lab to the clinic. She is excited to be working with Dr. Samuel Williams and his wonder team of doctors, nurses, and postdoc researchers. She is also glad to have two more years in New York City before (potentially) entering medical school in 2025.
Jill Shah is originally from Westchester, New York. She interned at Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center through the RCSS-TCC summer internship program in 2016. Her summer project focused on high-tech alternative and augmentative communication devices in the Huntington's Disease unit. From Fall 2016 to Spring 2018, she worked on the RCSS website and organized RCSS events, including the Charles Borrok Lunches. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science in Spring 2018. Since graduation, she has been conducting clinical research at Yale School of Medicine.
Jenny Davis graduated from Barnard College in 2018 with a BA in History and the pre-med curriculum under her belt. Since graduation, she has relocated to Santa Fe, NM where she enjoys her various jobs -- working as a nanny, a medical scribe in a local ER, and interning for a ceramic artist -- while exploring the wonders of the Southwest. She continues to feel motivated by her meaningful experiences with the RCSS, in particular the relationships she forged with residents of Terence Cardinal Cooke. Jenny volunteers with a hospice organization in Santa Fe and plans to apply to medical schools with Cycle 2020. She is passionate about intergenerational initiatives and geriatrics, which she intends to further pursue in medical school. Until then, she is setting roots in New Mexico and learning new skills whenever/wherever possible.
Hector is a sophomore at Columbia College studying Biology in the pre-medical track. As an international student from El Salvador, his work at the RCSS focuses on Spanish language advocacy in the healthcare industry, as well as engagement with the Hispanic community of New York City. In his free time, Hector makes sure to make use of what the city has to offer, constantly going to new places with his friends. He also enjoys art history and has been painting for almost 10 years, so feel free to reach out about anything art related!
Hannah Lin is a senior in Columbia College studying Neuroscience and Public Health. Her first project as a RCSS scholar, Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic, collected creative reflections from students across Columbia University to share their subjective experiences during the pandemic. These reflections were published in the 2022 RCSS Journal, which Hannah worked on with Keylin Escobar, a fellow RCSS scholar who designed the publication. Hannah serves as the scholar in charge of logistics and gathering RCSS together.
Ewoma Ogbaudu graduated from Columbia College in 2018 as a pre-med student with a degree in Biology. As an intern, Ewoma worked with Neci Whye to create the Marginalization in Medicine course and a seminar series to address the social implications of race. Since graduation, Ewoma has worked with the National Academy of Medicine to tackle clinician burnout. He currently works as a medical scribe at the Phoenix Children’s Hospital and as an MCAT instructor for Kaplan. Ewoma plans to attend medical school in 2020 and will continue to focus on issues of health care inequity.
Eva Perez-Greene is a 2019 graduate of Columbia College, where she studied a combination of history, languages, and premedical sciences. Eva misses the residents of TCC with whom she began making art projects inspired by her interest in art history, as an RCSS intern during her sophomore summer. Eva is grateful to Robert Pollack and the RCSS interns who have since taken up the therapeutic practice, now called START, Student-Lead Art Therapy Program.
Eva currently works in Dr. Alon Herschhorn’s laboratory at the University of Minnesota where she is very excited to help develop new tools to study, at the molecular and cellular levels, the mechanisms underlying HIV-1 virus-host interactions. Eva also loves the children and teens she works with in an after-school intensive outpatient program, and she is passionate about attentive collaboration with patients, families, and her colleagues to promote optimal treatment outcomes for children.
She is excited to keep learning as much as she can about biology and ethics.
Ellie Hansen is a Psychology major at Columbia College, graduating in 2022. She is particularly interested in early-childhood emotional learning, and, recently, environmental humanities. She is currently working on the Tricentennial Project at RCSS, which seeks to bridge generational gaps in conversations about climate change.
Eilam Lehrman graduated from Columbia College in 2022 with a double major in Mathematics and Computer Science. He currently works as a software engineer at TD Securities.
Dr. Stuart Firestein is the former Chair of Columbia University's Department of Biological Sciences where his laboratory studies the vertebrate olfactory system which serves as a model for investigating general principles and mechanisms of signaling and perception in the brain. His laboratory seeks to answer that fundamental human question: How do I smell?
Dedicated to promoting the accessibility of science to a public audience Firestein serves as an advisor for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s program for the Public Understanding of Science, where he reviews scripts for the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Sloan Science and Technology Program, and for the Tribeca Film Festival. In 2011 he received the Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award for excellence in scholarship and teaching. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, an Alfred Sloan Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow. He recently joined the Santa Fe Institute as a member of the (visiting) Fractal Faculty. At Columbia he is on the Advisory boards of the Center for Science and Society (CSS) and the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience – both centers for interdisciplinary work between the sciences and the humanities. He has published two books on the workings of science for a general audience, Ignorance, How it Drives Science and Failure: Why Science is So Successful. They have been translated into 12 languages. He is a regular contributor to Nautilus magazine.Diane Huang is a senior at Columbia College, majoring in Economics-Mathematics and Computer Science. She currently manages the website and heads the production of the RCSS Journal. She has previously worked on projects in using in-home voice UI devices to track compliance and other data in chronic disease patients.
Dennis Zhang graduated from Columbia College in 2024 as a biology major and early inductee of Phi Beta Kappa, who pursued extensive scholarship and service centered around genetics and rare diseases.
As an interdisciplinary researcher, he developed novel genetic technologies at the Sternberg lab in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics while contemplating related bioethical issues at the Columbia Division of Ethics. His work culminated in numerous patent applications and publications in leading journals like Nature, Cell, and Science.
To contextualize and inspire his work, he supported rare genetic disease patients throughout college. As the president of a mentorship program for teens with sickle cell anemia, he worked with passionate peers to build two sickle cell advocacy comic books that have been shared with over 10 hospitals. As a hospice volunteer for terminally ill Huntington's disease patients, he revived the At Your Service volunteering program and documented patient life stories in physical books left by their bedsides.
Since graduating, Dennis conducted gene editing research at the University of Copenhagen as a US-Denmark Fulbright scholar and is pursuing an MD-PhD at Stanford as a physician-scientist-in-training. In his free time, he is a kombucha aficionado, plays guitar, and is likely marathon training—clocking miles by any means necessary—as a member of the NORD Running for Rare team.
Neci was a 2018 graduate from Columbia with degrees in Biology and art history. As an intern she worked on a series of projects with Ewoma Ogbaudu under the name Marginalization in Medicine discussing the social implications of race on health. This included a dinner conversation series, guest lecture series, and culminated in the Marginalization in Medicine course and conference in Spring Semester 2018. She is currently working at the Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore as a Clinic Research Assistant.
Dr. Craig D. Blinderman is the Chief of the Supportive Care Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He previously served as Director of the Adult Palliative Care Service at Columbia University Irving Medical Center/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital for 13 years and was the Course Director for Life at the End of Life: Palliative Care and Service, which was developed through collaboration with RCSS.
His academic interests include creating system-wide interventions to provide more timely supportive care to people with serious illness; enhancing pain and symptom management in cancer care; bringing the arts and narrative interventions into clinical practice; collaborative research in psychedelic-assisted therapy; and integrating contemplative care and meditation in patient care. In addition, he has a strong interest in teaching and developing programs to improve clinicians’ skills in communication about serious illness.
Christina Staudt, Ph.D. (Art History, CU 2001) is Co-Chair, Columbia University Seminar on Death and past Presidential Scholar, Concordia College – NY. She has supervised students in the Masters program, Sustainability in the Urban Environment at CCNY (CUNY) on green burial. A community educator and organizer, Staudt is the co-founder and past President of Westchester End-of-Life Coalition (2003-2019), an organization offering guidance and support to individuals living with serious illness and at the end of life. She is a trained death doula and since 1998, she has been a hospice volunteer, sitting vigil with the actively dying and their families. Her Advisory Board positions include CU GSAPP’s DeathLAB, Jansen Hospice & Palliative Care, and Cancer Support Team. She has co-edited and contributed chapters to several publications that integrate academic research and contemporary concerns about mortality, the care of the dying, and sustainable disposal, most recently The Future of the Corpse: Changing Ecologies in Death and Disposition (ABC/CLIO, 2021).
Chinmayi is a Columbia College junior studying Medical Humanities. Through the RCSS, she is working to understand how Ayurvedic medical concepts (originating in the Indian subcontinent) have been passed down through cultural traditions among the South Asian-American diaspora. She is also involved with Columbia Synapse, Columbia Science Review, and Columbia Religious Life. In her free time, she enjoys practicing taekwondo, writing poetry, gardening, and watching old Telugu movies.
Charles R. Borrok is one of the highest-ranking brokerage professionals at Cushman & Wakefield. Having joined in 1992 and now serving as Executive Vice Chairman, Mr. Borrok has been involved in the leasing over 70 million square feet throughout the world and has been involved in the purchase and sale of many important properties.
Brigid Connelly (she/her) graduated from the Columbia School of General Studies ’20 with a B.A. in Religion. A native Brooklynite, Brigid now lives on the west coast and is studying for her clinical doctorate in occupational therapy at the University of Southern California. Her personal and research interests include meaning making in illness and dis/ability, occupational justice, and accessible design and aesthetics.
As an RCSS intern, Brigid worked closely with Dr. Craig Blinderman and served twice (’18, ’19) as the teaching assistant for the seminar “Life at the End of Life: Palliative Care and Service.” Through her project, Brigid deepened her commitment to, and advocacy for, questions of medical ethics and human socio-emotional, existential, and ecological interdependence. Brigid considers her time spent working as a member of the RCSS—in classrooms and offices, over emails and lunch,—as a cornerstone of her experience at Columbia, and a living representation of what may be possible when there is community, commitment, and service without hierarchy.
Dr. Ashley Shaw is a current PGY1 in the MGHfC Pediatrics Residency. She received her MD/MBA in 2019 from Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School. Prior to medical school, Ashley worked full-time as a Project Coordinator for Quality of Life and Medical Administration in at ArchCare at Terence Cardinal Cooke working to improve interdisciplinary delivery of palliative and end of life care for the vulnerable elderly. During medical school, she cultivated a passion for primary care and social determinants of health across the lifespan and served as the Co-Leader for the Student Leadership Committee of the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care. Ashley is passionate about pediatrics, geriatrics, and public health and hopes to utilize her MD/MBA joint degree to improve both private and public sector community-based programs for vulnerable populations. Along with Dr. Lisa Rotenstein, Ashley founded CareZooming.com, a new organization that accessibly and affordably connects on-the-ground clinicians to one another for implementation guidance on their next healthcare delivery project.
Dr. Lechich is the Medical Director at the 609-bed Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center in Manhattan, NY and also serves as the Sr. V.P. for Clinical Strategy at ArchCare. As physician, teacher, administrator and writer, Dr. Lechich has focused on defining issues in quality of life for the institutionalized elderly and persons with late-stage Huntington’s disease. This message has been carried to the staff of local hospitals, medical students, fellows-in-training, families, and the care teams within the home Center. Empowerment of family, bedside caregivers and improving the formulation of highly individualized comprehensive approaches to care has been his passion for many years.
Anna Li is a senior in Barnard College majoring in Neuroscience & Behavior with a Behavioral concentration while pursuing the pre-med track. As president of the Terence Cardinal Cooke At Your Service volunteer program, she is working with RCSS to facilitate volunteer coordination between the Columbia community and TCC, including through the RCSS course AMST UN3930: Life at the End of Life.
Andrea is a first-generation college student, born and raised in the Philippines. She is majoring in Biochemistry, in hopes of working in the field of small molecule medicinal synthesis in the future. She lives in the beautiful island of O’ahu in Hawai’i, and loves to go around the island and have bonfire smores at the beach in the moonlight. When in the city, she loves exploring the neighborhood cuisines and art museums. She’s involved in the Chandler Chemical Society, Columbia Multicultural Recruitment Committee and Columbia Brainiacs!
For RCSS Intern-Scholars interested in my help and advice, my expertise is in the fine arts and graphic design. I have a large collage in the permanent collection of Columbia university. You can see it on display on the second floor of Faculty House. This work of mine is personal and deals with the ravages of, and responses to, eugenics.
In the past I have designed props for LaMama Theater, and a T-shirt for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. I have also done the frontispiece for many of Bob Pollack’s books; we are in addition co-authors of “The Course of Nature,” where my illustrations enlarge his commentary based on current scientific ideas.
I look forward to working with RCSS Intern-Scholars who wish to involve me in their projects. Have a look at my website for more examples of my work: https://amypollackart.wixsite.com/amypollackAlex Tang is a student at Columbia College graduating in 2020. He is double majoring in art history and biology, and is on the pre-medical track. Along with Chantal O'Brien, Alex co-leads the Student-Run Art Therapy Program within the HIV ward at Terence Cardinal Cooke Healthcare Center. Besides his involvement with RCSS, Alex is also engaged in HIV immunology biomedical research, and teaches health education in NYC Public Schools. He is committed to improving the physical, mental, and spiritual health of his communities.
Afua Addo is a student at Columbia College graduating in 2020. She is currently majoring in Neuroscience and Behavior, and as an RCSS intern she will be working with Shalom Omollo on the Dinner Series project as well has planning the Marginalization in Medicine Conference this fall. She hopes that these projects will connect undergraduate students to medical and public health professionals in their fields of interest, but at the same time change the way expert knowledge is perceived in medicine today. By encouraging marginalized perspectives and putting an emphasis on the many unique and equally important avenues one can take to be apart of or impact the medical field, these projects can accomplish just that. Afua is also a member of the Sulzer lab at CUMC which studies dopamine systems in the brain and their dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases. She is heavily involved with RUF, a Christian fellowship group, as well as GlobeMed on campus.
Abigayle Dolmseth is in her final year of the premedical post-baccalaureate program at Columbia's School of General Studies. Before beginning her premedical curriculum, she obtained a bachelor's degree in International Relations and a master's degrees in Economic Development. Abigayle is currently working on a project that deals with end of life planning and advance directives in a nursing home setting, and seeks to understand whether these planning efforts align with principles of Goal-Concordant Care. She will begin medical school at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons in August of 2019.