Chief of Medical Genetics

The Department of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine is seeking a physician scientist leader for its Division of Medical Genetics.  The Department includes thirteen (13) academic subspecialty divisions and 145 full-time faculty members. There are also 300 voluntary faculty members on the academic staff of the department.  The Department functions within the NewYork-Presbyterian Phyllis and David Komansky Children's Hospital, a full-service, multidisciplinary "children's hospital within a hospital."  The Department of Pediatrics and the Komansky Children’s Hospital are committed to improving the health of infants, children, and adolescents through high quality and comprehensive programs in patient care, medical education, scientific research, and child and family advocacy.

NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital at Weill Cornell Medical Center is comprised of the following major facilities:

• Pediatric Inpatient Service that includes a 23-bed PICU unit, a 26-bed general inpatient unit and a 19 -bed intermediate care unit (IMC). Within the IMC unit are 11 beds hard-wired for video EEG monitoring; four of which are designated as a dedicated Epilepsy Monitoring Unit Specialized Clinical Pediatric Services, and 24/7 Pediatric Intensivists and Neonatologists in-house coverage.
• Level IV Regional NICU (NewYork-Presbyterian Alexandra Cohen Hospital for Women and Newborns – 60 beds with unit-specific MRI and operating room, opened in 2020.
• Level II Pediatric Trauma Center).
• Pediatric Emergency Medicine Service with approximately 18,00 visits /year (Pre Covid).
• Pediatric Ambulatory Procedure Suite.
• Pediatric Radiology and Anesthesia Services.
• Pediatric – surgical sub-specialties (General, Cardiac, ENT, Urology, Ophthalmology, Neurosurgery Transplant).

NYP hosts a comprehensive network of regional hospitals located in Lower Manhattan and the outer boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. These three regional hospitals deliver a variety of pediatric services and are closely allied with the NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital.

Weill Cornell Medicine and the Department of Pediatrics are supported by a strong network of primary care pediatricians that provide a steady referral stream of patients to sub-specialty programs. They are responsible for more than 44,000 outpatient and 55,000 inpatient referrals and procedures annually.

Weill Cornell Medicine is a comprehensive academic medical center that's committed to excellence in patient care, scientific discovery, and the education of future physicians in New York City and around the world. Our doctors and scientists-faculty from Weill Cornell Medical College, Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, and the Weill Cornell Physician Organization-are engaged in world-class clinical care and cutting-edge research that connect patients to the latest treatment innovations and prevention strategies. Located in the heart of the Upper East Side's scientific corridor, Weill Cornell Medicine's powerful network of collaborators extends to its parent university Cornell University; to Qatar, where an international campus offers a U.S. medical degree; and to programs in Tanzania, Haiti, Brazil, Austria, and Turkey. Our medical practices serve communities throughout New York City, and our faculty provide comprehensive care at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian Queens, and NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. At Weill Cornell Medicine, we work together to treat each individual, not just their conditions or illnesses, as we strive to deliver the finest possible care for our patients - the center of everything we do. Weill Cornell Medicine is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. Weill Cornell Medicine provides equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, color, age, religion, protected veteran or disability status, or genetic information.

NewYork-Presbyterian Alexandra Cohen Hospital for Women and Newborns

In August 2020, the NICU and the Newborn Nursery services moved into the NewYork-Presbyterian Alexandra Cohen Hospital for Women and Newborns, a new state-of-the-art facility located on the top six floors of NewYork-Presbyterian David H. Koch center.   This 246,500 square foot facility provides state-of-the-art care with the latest technology and therapies, including an unparalleled in-unit operating room and dedicated MRI.  The hospital includes 60 single patient NICU beds and 75 maternity beds, projected to increase the current number of nearly 5,500 annual live births to over 7,000 in 2021.

Division of Medical Genetics

Reporting to the Department Chair of Pediatrics, the new Division Chief will advance the clinical practice of Medical Genetics at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM), provide research mentorship, and foster education of medical students, residents, fellows, and peers. The chief will lead and grow a diverse Division of Medical Genetics that includes programs in collaboration with the WCM Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatric Neurosurgery, Pediatric Otolaryngology, Pediatric Urology, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.  It is also expected that the Chief will foster the development of collaborations with the Division of Clinical Genetics at the NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center.  In addition to the Division Chief position, there are currently 2 Medical Genetics faculty members and 2 Genetic Counselors who provide clinical services and help fulfill the teaching and research missions of the Division. 

The Division Chief will direct a busy Medical Genetics inpatient and outpatient service, maintain and enhance commitments to Medical Genetics education, and to provide mentorship to Division faculty. S/he will be provided the resources to retain, attract, and recruit top clinician, scientist, and physician-scientist talent. The Division Chief will maintain a close collaboration with leaders at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian (NYP) to include strategic planning and development and resource management.

Scientific/Research Environment at Weill Cornell Medicine

Weill Cornell Medicine is committed to excellence in research, education, patient care, and the advancement of the art and science of medicine. The College is divided into basic science and patient care departments that focus on the sciences underlying clinical medicine and/or encompass the study, treatment, and prevention of human diseases. The basic science and clinical departments are located in multiple, tightly clustered buildings straddling York Avenue between 68th and 72nd Streets on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Weill Cornell Medical College has 330,000 net square feet (NSF) of research laboratory space. Over the past decade large portions of the research space have undergone major renovations. These renovations have provided many research programs with modern, state-of-the-art laboratories.

Total research support is more than $200 million, of which $133 million represents federal government and non-federal sponsored research grants, training grants, and fellowships. In addition to their affiliation with New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical College and Weill Cornell Graduate School maintain major affiliations with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Hospital for Special Surgery, The Rockefeller University, and the metropolitan-area institutions that constitute the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare Network.

The Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC)

The CTSC addresses the necessity of an integrated, comprehensive research support system that includes education, training and mentoring for clinical research investigators, coordinators, and staff. The CTSC partner institutions include Weill Cornell Medical College, Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Cornell University-Ithaca, Cornell University Cooperative Extension, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Hospital for Special Surgery, Hunter College School of Nursing, Hunter College School of Urban Public Health and the Animal Medical Center. The CTSC includes federally and privately sponsored multi-center trials, training grants, and individual awards as seed grants to investigators. It provides opportunities for qualified investigators to advance medical knowledge from the laboratory bench to the clinical bedside. It also has a comprehensive clinical and translational training program designed to stimulate and enhance careers and training in clinical research for medical students and junior investigators. The CTSC acts as a conduit through which essential resources, technological tools and education programs for all partners can be efficiently shared and managed.  Integral to Weill Cornell Medicine's Strategic Plan for Research, which was initiated seven years ago, the plan for the CTSC brought to fruition the integration of existing inter-institutional resources among neighbors on York Avenue and partner institutions in the immediate area. The resulting cluster of Upper East Side institutions forms a unique and cohesive biomedical complex fulfilling the NIH roadmap initiative of breaking down institutional silos and barriers separating scientific disciplines to accelerate the clinical application of basic science discoveries. This center is funded through the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs), a national consortium that is transforming how clinical and translational research is conducted.

 Belfer Research Building

The Belfer Research Building, a state-of-the-art facility that ushers in a new era at the institution for cutting- edge, translational science. The 18-story, $650 million building nearly doubles Weill Cornell Medicine's existing research space and empowers scientists to rapidly translate groundbreaking discoveries into the most advanced patient care.  The 480,000-square-foot building, located at 69th Street between First and York Avenue, is devoted to translational bench- to-bedside research targeting some of the most formidable health challenges of the 21st century, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, metabolic diseases, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, children's health, global health and infectious diseases. The Belfer Research Building also headquarters the Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute, Inc. (Tri-I TDI), an innovative partnership between Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, The Rockefeller University and Weill Cornell Medical College.

Animal Facilities

The Research Animal Resource Center (RARC) provides facilities, services, and information to facilitate effective research using laboratory animals (i.e., for housing mice, nude mice, rabbits, rats, guinea pigs, frogs, primates, birds, etc.). Several rooms in the Animal Facility are dedicated to transgenic mouse experiments and breeding.  The GEM Phenotyping Core has an MX-20 Faxitron (Faxitron X-ray Corporation, Wheeling, IL), which produces extremely high-resolution radiographs of small laboratory animals (mice and rats), as well as excised tissues and paraffin blocks. Specimens can be placed on adjustable shelves within a shielded and interlocked enclosure to obtain images magnified up to 5x.

Tissue Biorepository

The Weill Cornell Department of Pathology and the Weill Cornell Cancer Center has a centralized biobank that provides qualified investigators access to high quality, well-annotated human biospecimens in a regulatory compliant manner. The biobank also provides third-party identified cell lines. The 505 sq ft storage facility used to archive frozen tissue, blood, urine, DNA, and RNA is equipped with ten -80c freezers and four liquid N2 dewers. 

WCM Core Laboratories Center (CLC)

WCM core facilities include: the Gene Core facilities, Mass Spectroscopy/NMR Core Facility, a Transgenic Core Facility, an Imaging Core Facility, an Optical and Electron Microcopy Core Facility, Q-PCR facility and a Microarray Core Facility. The Flow Cytometry Core has several flow cytometers, including a BD FACS Calibur (2 lasers, 6-prameter) and Canto (3 lasers, 10 parameters) analyzers and sorters: a BD Vantage cell sorter with tunable lasers, a 5 laser BD Influx sorter and a BD Aria high-speed cell sorter. Analysis software includes Treestar’s FlowJo and BD’s Diva options.

Genomics Core Facility

The Genomics Core Facility of the WCM Core Laboratories Center (CLC) provides state-of-the-art instruments and services, and expertise in their applications, to the Weill Cornell Medicine community and to outside investigators.  Resources and services include next generation sequencing, single cell genomics, nucleic acid mass spectrometry, and real-time PCR.  The facility provides consultation on project design and data analysis, and offers seminars, educational workshops, and training.

The Biostatistics and Research Methodology Core

The Biostatistics and Research Methodology Core at WCM is comprised of a broad collection of services used to identify research questions, construct hypotheses, design investigative studies and data collection strategies, conduct statistical analyses of data, and interpret findings. Members of the Department of Public Health with expertise in a range of research methodology are available to investigators for consultation on statistical analysis, sample size and power analysis, study design, protocol design/research planning, database design and management, questionnaire development, preparation or revision of manuscripts, and program evaluation.

Department of Pediatrics Research Support

In the Fiscal Year 2021 (07/01/2020-06/30/2021) the Department of Pediatrics supported and managed a total of 84 individual research grant awards, 30 individual funded investigators, with collective project total costs of 14.5M. In the same period the Department supported 254 IRB protocols for 94 individual principal investigators. Clinical trials income came to the total of $186,431 for 78 funded studies.

Joint Clinical Trials Office (JCTO)

The Department of Pediatrics employs two full-time Regulatory Coordinators, two full-time Research Specialists, and six full-time Data Managers. The Department of Pediatrics team is headed by an experienced Clinical Trials Administrator, and it is supervised by the Associate Director of the JCTO. Collectively, this unit is responsible for support and management of the majority of clinical research studies at the Department. This allows us to maintain unity, standards and the highest quality of data and regulatory management for clinical research.

Position Details

KEY RELATIONSHIPS

Reports to 

• Sallie Permar, M.D., Ph.D., Chair of Pediatrics       

Direct reports

• Faculty
• Clinical staff   

Other key relationships    

• Division Chiefs and Vice Chairs
• Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
• Pediatric Neurosurgery, Otolaryngology, and Urology
• Division of Clinical Genetics at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital
• Faculty at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
• NYP and WCM leadership

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• The Chief of the Division of Medical Genetics will be responsible for full program development and oversight, including clinical, educational and research program activities of the Division. Mentoring of junior faculty and fellows, support of quality improvement and safety initiatives, expansion of clinical services within the NewYork-Presbyterian network, and continued development of research related nephrology are notable priorities.
• As Chief of the Division of Medical Genetics, the leader will have responsibility for:
• Providing leadership in enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion and promoting cultural competence within all aspects of the Division and throughout WCM and NYP.

• The quality, safety, and cost-effective care of WCM’s and NYP’s patients.
• Serving as a leader, mentor, and guide to senior staff, particularly with regard to the clinical enterprise.
• Expanding clinical, translational, and basic research activities and funding of the Division’s faculty and staff.
• The Division Chief is expected to foster research collaborations between the Division of Medical Genetics with investigators from the Departments of Pediatrics, Medicine and Surgery, the Gale and Ira Drukier Institute for Children’s Health, the Department of Population Health Sciences, as well as The Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
• All educational activities in the Division, including overseeing medical students and residents while on Genetics rotations or involved in the care of inpatients and outpatients cared for by the Medical Genetics service, cultivating research projects with residents and medical students, and faculty teaching in the medical school and residency curriculum. 
• Strategic planning related to development of clinical programs, including NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital.
• Pursue bi-campus partnership and collaboration with NYP/Columbia University Medical Center’s Division of Clinical Genetics.
• Professional development of the faculty of the Division, leading to the advancement and leadership development of its members.
• Financial management of the Division including budgeting, faculty FTE management, and resource allocation.
• Recruitment of faculty to the Division and shared responsibility, along with administrative executives, for the hiring of other professional and support staff for the Division.
• Serving as a member of the senior academic leadership team of WCM’s Department of Pediatrics.
• Representing the Department, WCM, and NYP regionally and nationally.
• Other duties, as requested by the Department Chair.

DESIRED OUTCOMES

• Strengthen and unify the division by recruiting top talent for open faculty positions and optimizing performance of the existing team of pediatric geneticists.
• Promote and advance the tripartite mission of clinical, research, and education within the Department and Division.
• Develop and foster research programs and opportunities within the Division
• Analyze and evaluate opportunities to grow clinical volumes and strengthen referral channels from NYP Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, and NYP Queens Hospital.
• Continue to integrate programs and services between the main campus on east 68th street, NYP/Columbia Medical Center, and the sites in Brooklyn and Queens.

DEPARTMENTAL AND INSTITUTIONAL VISION

The Department would like to integrate with the overall vision of the Institution in the following ways:

• With the breadth and depth of clinical programs in the department, consideration for a biorepository for samples, with an overarching IRB, and accessible for research by faculty across the institution, and to include our sister institutions at Columbia, NYH Queens and Brooklyn Methodist
• Integrate with the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine at Weill Cornell to create a pediatric precision medicine program focused program to include among others pediatric cancers and cancer predisposition
• Involvement in the gene therapy initiative, for hemoglobinopathies, metabolic conditions such as CALD, Gaucher, Nieman Pick among others

Application Process

• To apply, please submit the following items to pedsrecruitment@med.cornell.edu
  
  • A cover letter (not to exceed 2 pages)
  • Your current C.V.
  • 2-3 references (names with contact information)

If you have questions about the application process, please contact Dr. Sujit Sheth (shethsu@med.cornell.edu), who is serving as the search committee chair.