Karie Danielle Keera Runcie, MD

Dr. Christine Kim Garcia is the Frode-Jensen Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Her laboratory studies the genetic basis of lung disease, including pulmonary fibrosis. She is the Chief of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine Division within the Department of Medicine, a member of the Center for Precision Medicine and Genomics and an affiliate of the Institute for Genomic Medicine.

Gulam Manji, M.D., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Manji received his M.D. degree from Ross University School of Medicine in 2009 and completed his residency in internal medicine at Albany Medical College. He then completed his fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, where his clinical focus was on the treatment of gastrointestinal malignancies, melanoma, and sarcoma under the mentorship of Dr. Gary Schwartz, Chief of Hematology and Oncology. Dr. Manji conducts translational research with the overall goal to developing new treatments for cancer. His focus is in gastrointestinal malignancies, particularly pancreas adenocarcinoma, on which he is conducting preclinical combination immunotherapy studies on genetically engineered mice with pancreas cancer in the Olive laboratory at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center. The combination immunotherapy preclinical proposal received the Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology-2015. The goal of these preclinical studies is to bring promising new therapies to the clinic in an early phase clinical trials Dr. Manji's research career in identifying new genes and their implication in disease has led to numerous key publications and an issued patent. Dr. Manji cares for patients with gastrointestinal malignancies, with a particular focus on pancreatic and liver cancers, and sarcomas. He is the principal investigator of an investigator-initiated multicenter clinical trial that he wrote with Dr. Gary Schwartz in sarcoma and malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors and is responsible for clinical trials conducted in liver, bile duct, gallbladder, and pancreas cancers at Columbia University Medical Center.

Dr. Elissa Driggin is a cardiologist and an Assistant Professor of Medicine practicing at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She specializes in Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology and Mechanical Circulatory Support. She is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Disease. Dr. Driggin received her medical degree at New York University School of Medicine where she was induced in the Alpha Omega Alpha honor society. She completed her internship and residency in Internal Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. Subsequently, she finished her fellowships in Cardiovascular Disease and Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. During her fellowship in Cardiovascular Disease, she was selected as Chief Fellow. She has also received a Masters of Science in Patient Oriented Research at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Driggin's clinical interests include heart failure, with particular expertise in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), heart transplant, and mechanical circulatory support. Her research focuses on nutrition and heart failure pathophysiology. Dr. Driggin has authored numerous peer-reviewed manuscripts in the field and has been published in several prestigious peer-reviewed journals.