2018 Speaker Bios

Judy H. Cho, MD
Director of the Institute for Personalized Medicine
Senior Associate Dean for Precision Medicine
Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences
Professor of Medicine (Gastroenterology)
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Dr. Cho has defined genetic factors that underlie susceptibility to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). She is the Principal Investigator of the Data Coordinating Center of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) IBD Genetics Consortium. She has also served as a member of the Council of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and is a member of the American Association for Physicians. A key principle of personalized medicine is early detection and treatment, using genetic information. Traditionally, we think of genetic variation as defining increased risk for disease. But some of the most interesting genetic variation involves variants that decrease disease risk. This helps us identify potentially new drug targets. The latest trends in disease risks in the United States and the world are driven by changes in exposure to microbes and diet. Gut biology plays a central role.

Alan B. Copperman, MD
Director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility
Vice Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Science
Clinical Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Science
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Chief Medical Officer at Sema4

Dr. Copperman has a long history of success in treating infertility. He has special expertise in fertility preservation technologies. He co-founded and serves as Medical Director of RMA of New York, one of the largest and most prestigious in vitro fertilization centers in the country. He is also Chief Medical Officer of Sema4, a health information company spun out from Mount Sinai. Sema4 creates tools to help patients, clinicians, and researchers better diagnose, treat, and prevent disease. He has been recognized by his peers and by patient advocacy organizations for his commitment to patient-focused and data-driven care. He has published more than 100 original manuscripts and book chapters on reproductive medicine. In addition, he has co-authored more than 300 scientific abstracts on infertility, in vitro fertilization, egg freezing, ovum donation, and reproductive genetics.

Kenneth L. Davis, MD
President and Chief Executive Officer
Mount Sinai Health System

Dr. Davis, MD, is President and CEO of the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, one of the nation’s largest integrated health systems, which includes the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and seven hospitals. He is a leader in the move away from fee-for-service medicine to population health with the aim of keeping more patients healthy and out of the hospital. As a neurobiologist, Dr. Davis conducted pioneering research that led the FDA to approve four of the first five drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. In 2002, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. The author or co-author of more than 575 scientific articles, Dr. Davis has been recognized as one of the most highly cited researchers in the field of brain diseases. He has won numerous awards including the George H. W. Bush Lifetime of Leadership Award from Yale University. In 2014 he was named a trustee of the Aspen Institute.

Linda V. DeCherrie, MD
Clinical Director, Mount Sinai at Home
Professor of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine
Professor of Medicine
Mount Sinai Health System

Dr. DeCherrie is an expert on innovative models of home-based care and medical education for chronic care of complex frail patients in the ambulatory setting. She is Clinical Director of Mount Sinai at Home, which brings together multiple programs that provide in-home care. These programs include Hospitalization at Home, which delivers hospital-level care direct to patients’ homes; Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors Program, which provides primary and palliative care to homebound patients, offers emotional support and social services to caregivers, and educates medical trainees about home care; and Palliative Care at Home, which delivers home-based palliative care in coordination with the patient’s  medical team.

Niyum Gandhi
Executive Vice President and Chief Population Health Officer
Mount Sinai Health System

Mr. Gandhi oversees Mount Sinai’s transition from a fee-for-service model of care to one focused on value and risk-based population health. He focuses on the clinical and economic transformations necessary. This includes redesigning care management and clinical models to deliver high-value care, working with payers to establish economic models that support delivery of value-based care, and building the Health System’s clinically integrated network – Mount Sinai Health Partners IPA, LLC. Prior to Mount Sinai, Mr. Gandhi was a partner at Oliver Wyman. There, he worked with health care providers to design and implement value-based clinical models and develop value-based contracts and integrated product distribution strategies. He also helped align physician incentives toward value, and established an infrastructure to support population health management.

Ari Grinspan, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Director of GI Microbial Therapeutics
Mount Sinai Health System

Dr. Grinspan pioneered the fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) program at Mount Sinai to treat recurrent and refractory Clostridium difficile infection. This program has developed into a referral center for the New York tri-state area. His research focuses on exploring utility of FMT in clinical practice. He focuses on Clostridium difficile infection and inflammatory bowel disease. His research goals focus on the relationship between the gut microbiome and the human host and how microbial manipulation affects health.

Philip Landrigan, MD, MSc
Dean for Global Health
Professor of Environmental Medicine and Pediatrics
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

For four decades, Dr. Landrigan has been a leader in environmental medicine. His early studies of lead poisoning contributed to the U.S. government’s decision to remove lead from paint and gasoline. This policy decision lowered the blood lead levels of all American children by more than 90 percent. A landmark study he led at the National Academy of Sciences defined children’s unique susceptibilities to pesticides and other toxic chemicals. As a result, the government made substantial changes in U.S. pesticide law. He guided EPA in establishing the Office of Children's Health Protection. In New York City, Dr. Landrigan has directed medical and epidemiologic follow-up of 20,000 9/11 rescue workers. He co-chaired the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health. Their 2017 report showed that pollution causes 9 million deaths annually and is the largest environmental cause of disease and death.  He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Eric Schadt, PhD
Founder and CEO of Sema4
Dean for Precision Medicine
Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Dr. Schadt is the founder and CEO of Sema4, a patient-centered predictive health company spun out from Mount Sinai. Sem4 creates practical tools to help patients, clinicians, and researchers better diagnose, treat, and prevent disease. At Mount Sinai, Dr. Schadt is Dean for Precision Medicine. Previously, he was previously Founding Director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology and Professor and Chair of the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences. Dr. Schadt is an expert on constructing predictive models of disease that link molecular biology to physiology. For more than 20 years, he has built groups and companies to address the complexity of human diseases. These include Merck, Rosetta, Sage Bionetworks, Pacific Biosciences, and the Icahn Institute, as well as Sema4. He has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers in leading scientific journals and contributed to a number of discoveries relating to the genetic basis of common human diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Prabhjot Singh, MD, PhD
Director of The Arnhold Institute for Global Health
Chair of the Department of Health System Design and Global Health
Mount Sinai Health System

Dr. Singh is Director of the Arnhold Institute for Global Health and Chair of the Department of Health System Design and Global Health at the Mount Sinai Health System. He is also Special Advisor for Strategy and Design at the Peterson Center on Healthcare. Previously, he was professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, and co-chair of the One Million Community Health Worker Campaign. Throughout his career, he has focused on how advances in community health systems globally can improve health in America. He advises social enterprises and startups that are pioneering a new generation of sustainable and scalable care models. Dr. Singh is author of Dying and Living in the Neighborhood: A Street-Level View of America’s Healthcare Promise. His next books will focus on last mile health (with Raj Panjabi, MD, MPH) and how to invest in better health care (with Niyum Gandhi).