Sana H Siddiqui, MD

Dr. Slater directed The Pediatric Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison Service from 1992 until 2014, when he became a Senior Consultant. The Consultation-Liaison Service provides evaluations and brief treatment for children and adolescents hospitalized at the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York, who have a primary psychiatric disorder, psychiatric complications of a medical illness, complicated neuropsychiatric syndromes, medical illnesses or symptoms thought to have significant psychiatric components, and patients with adjustment or compliance problems. During the time he directed the Consultation-Liaison Service, Dr. Slater created liaisons exist to a variety of inpatient clinical services in Children's Hospital, including the cardiac transplant, neurology, and hematology-oncology services. Psychiatric evaluations are a routine part of the clinical evaluations for heart and lung transplantation. Dr. Slater's book, entitled Tell Me Where it Hurts, which is a parenting book about somatization disorders in children, was published in the fall of 2002. In 2002, Dr. Slater also authored book chapters on psychopharmacology in medically ill children, psychiatric aspects of transplantation, and psychiatric issues in children with cancer. An article written by Dr. Slater entitled "Deciphering Emotional Aches and Physical Pains in Children" appeared in the June issue of Pediatric Annals. Lastly, in 2001, Dr. Slater created an after-school program geared specifically for children with special needs, which largely serves children with neuropsychiatric disorders in Irvington, New York, which served the community in Westchester County. Dr. Slater's contributions to education have been extensive. He teaches the Child Development course to the second-year P&S students (based on a chapter he wrote on Life Development for the textbook used in the second year medical student psychiatry course), does weekly attending rounds with pediatric house staff, and is the leader of a weekly preceptorship with the third-year P&S students rotating through the pediatric service. Dr. Slater teaches in the Foundations of Clinical Medicine course for P&S students in the first, second and major clinical years. Dr. Slater has been the recipient on numerous awards. As a Child Psychiatry Fellow, he was awarded the Viola Bernard Award on two occasions and used funding from this award to create a documentary film about children receiving heart transplants, which continues to be used by families awaiting heart transplantation. He later was the contributing producer for an HBO film, "Heart of a Child", which was a documentary about a girl who received a heart-lung transplantation. Dr. Slater's teaching efforts have been rewarded both at the medical center, when he received the Medical Student Teacher of the Year in 1997, and at the national level, when he received Nancy C.A. Roeske Certificate of Recognition for Excellence in Medical Student Education in May 2003 (awarded by the American Psychiatric Association). Dr. Slater has a private practice specializing in pediatric psychopharmacology in Irvington, New York.

Dr. Zuckerman joined the Columbia faculty as assistant clinical professor of pediatrics in July of 2011 after spending seven years as a pediatrics resident and pediatric cardiology fellow at Columbia University Medical Center. In 2009, Dr. Zuckerman was chosen as one of the chief fellows in the division of pediatric cardiology. His research interests include pediatric cardiomyopathies, donor- and recipient-related issues surrounding pediatric heart transplantation, and drug therapies for prevention and treatment of graft rejection following heart transplantation. He is part of the faculty with the Program for Pediatric Cardiomyopathy, Heart Failure, and Transplantation, and was named associate director of the fellowship in the division of pediatric cardiology in July of 2015.

One of the nation's leading experts in hearing loss, Lawrence Lustig, MD, was appointed chair of the Department of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and otolaryngologist-in-chief at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, effective July 1, 2014. “We are very pleased to welcome Larry Lustig to our faculty,” said Lee Goldman, MD, dean of the faculties of health sciences and medicine, Columbia University Medical Center. “His experience and success leading major research and clinical programs will help us continue to grow our Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery’s basic, clinical, and translational research programs and our clinical enterprise, including even stronger collaboration with faculty across our departments.” “Dr. Lustig’s extensive background in research and clinical care for hearing loss and related disorders will be pivotal to our continued provision of innovative, outstanding and patient-centered care, said Steven J. Corwin, MD, chief executive officer of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. “His expertise adds significantly to the depth and breadth of our ENT program, which addresses a range of health issues including hearing loss, benign and cancerous tumors, nasal and sinus disorders, voice and swallowing issues.” Dr. Lustig treats the full spectrum of ear disorders in adults and children, as well as skull base disease. His specialties include skull base surgery, cochlear implants, the genetics of hearing loss, cochlear gene therapy, balance disorders, and hair cell physiology. He has led several NIH-funded research projects examining the underlying causes of hearing loss, including a recently completed a two-year $550,000 grant to explore cochlear gene therapy as a potential approach to treating children born with genetic forms of hearing loss. This work stems from an initial study in which he and colleagues demonstrated that the inner hair cell glutamate-transporter VGLUT3 is integral to the development of hearing, while a mutation of the transporter causes early profound hearing loss. In follow-up studies, they demonstrated that virally mediated gene therapy can successfully restore the hearing phenotype in a mouse model of genetic deafness. Based on this work, they are currently exploring additional models of genetic deafness to see if these results can be duplicated. NIH has awarded a five-year grant to explore the use of virally mediated gene therapy to regenerate spiral (cochlear) ganglia—nerve cells that transport sound from the cochlea to the brain—to enable the sense of hearing. Dr. Lustig’s interdisciplinary research includes collaboration with an orthopedic surgery researcher at UCSF to study cochlear bone development. Using animal models and molecular techniques applied to bone growth and development, they are looking at how the material properties of bone enclosing the inner ear contribute to hearing. They anticipate that their findings may help further understanding of how metabolic abnormalities cause certain types of hearing loss, including otosclerosis, Padget’s disease, and other conditions that cause defective bone development. Additional collaboration has included work with a pharmacologist at UCSF, where Dr. Lustig studied the mechanism of hearing loss caused by platinum-based chemotherapies. Dr. Lustig has published more than 125 articles in peer-reviewed journals, as well as book chapters. He co-edited a textbook, “Clinical Neurotology: Diagnosing and Managing Disorders of Hearing, Balance and the Facial Nerve.” In 2004, Dr. Lustig joined UCSF, where he has served as chief of the Division of Otology and Neurotology at both UCSF and San Francisco General Hospital, director of the Douglas Grant Cochlear Implant Center, clinical chief of the otolaryngology service on the Parnassus campus, and co-director of the Center for Balance and Falls. Before joining UCSF, Dr. Lustig served on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University, where he was a member of the Johns Hopkins Listening Center and cochlear implant team. He also completed a fellowship in otology, neurotology, and skull base surgery at Hopkins. Dr. Lustig is a member of numerous professional organizations, including the American Otologic Society, the American Auditory Society, the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, the American Neurotology Society, and the North American Skull Base Society. He earned his bachelor’s degree in microbiology at the University of California, Berkeley, and his medical degree at UCSF, where he also completed a residency in otolaryngology/head and neck surgery.