Nuwan Gunawardhana, MD

Dr. Haffey received his BA in Literature and Literary Studies in University of Colorado in 2002. He then obtained his DO degree in West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine in 2016. He completed his internship at Stony Brook Medicine-Southampton Hospital, followed by a residency in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia/Cornell in 2020. After his Fellowship focusing on Pain Medicine, Dr. Haffey joined Columbia University Medical Center in May 2021 and Weill Cornell Medicine in February 2025 up to present.

Tristan T. Sands, MD, PhD is Assistant Professor in the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons (Columbia VP&S) Departments of Neurology and Pediatrics. He is a pediatric neurologist who treats children and babies suffering from epilepsy and a physician scientist with expertise in genetic causes of epilepsy and neurodevelopmental disease. Dr. Sands completed his MD-PhD at Columbia VP&S through a Medical Scientist Training Program with thesis work in lab of Dr. Arnold Kriegstein. During child neurology residency at UCSF, Dr. Sands trained in electroclinical phenotyping of the epilepsies under Dr. M. Roberta Cilio. After finishing his clinical training at Columbia VP&S in epilepsy and clinical neurophysiology with Dr. Jim Riviello, Dr. Sands joined Columbia VP&S as faculty in 2017, first training in neurogenetics at the Institute for Genomic Medicine, and then returning to the bench to study genetic epilepsy using mouse models under the mentorship of Dr. Wayne Frankel. Dr. Sands has worked closely with families to treat hundreds of children with epilepsy. He is the author of chapters on pediatric epilepsy and genetic epilepsy in major textbooks in the field of neurology, including Merritt’s Neurology and Swaiman’s Pediatric Neurology. Dr. Sands has served as an expert on ClinGen’s epilepsy gene curation panel since 2017. In 2023, Dr. Sands was named Fellow of the American Epilepsy Society in recognition of professional accomplishment and dedication in the field of epilepsy. Dr. Sands is a 2024 Louis V. Gerstner Scholar. His research contributions include demonstration of the exquisite efficacy of carbamazepine for neonatal epilepsy caused by inherited loss-of-function variants in KCNQ2 and KCNQ3, work that led to changes to the International League against Epilepsy guidelines and recommendations on the treatment of seizures in newborn babies. Dr. Sands reported the electroclinical characterization of a new gain-of-function phenotype caused by de novo variants in KCNQ3. Dr. Sands reported variants in NBEA as a cause epilepsy and neurodevelopment, and he characterized the largest cohort of patients with epilepsy and neurodevelopmental disability caused by pathogenic variants in CSNK2B. The Sands "END (Epilepsy & Neurodevelopmental Disease) Laboratory," established in 2022 in the Center for Translational Research in Neurodevelopmental Disease (CTRND), uses mouse and human cellular models to identify convergent disease mechanisms and novel therapeutic strategies for epilepsy and encephalopathy caused by rare genetic mutations. These research efforts are supported by federal grants from both NIH and private agencies.

Dr. Tina Wang is the Associate Hospital Epidemiologist for NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. In addition to this, she spends a portion of her time on the inpatient clinical service at both the Columbia and Allen Hospitals. She completed her fellowship training at Weill Cornell Medicine, where she worked closely with the Hospital Epidemiology teams at both Cornell and Columbia, before joining the Columbia Infectious Diseases Division and Infection Prevention & Control Department in 2020.