Message from the Dean

Kenneth Kaushansky, MD

Research at Stony Brook Medicine is constantly pushing the frontiers of medical knowledge and learning. We are intrepid explorers who not only push the existing boundaries of medicine — we create new ones.

Consider, for example, the work of Dr. Ellen Li and a team of researchers at Stony Brook University who are assessing GI cancer biology in African-Americans to find out why their risk is higher for colorectal and pancreatic cancers. Together with SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Stony Brook is leading the most concentrated effort yet to collect and study African American tissue samples, so we can discover what treatments patients will respond to best.

Or what about the work of Dr. Yusuf Hannun, the Joel Strum Kenny Professor in Cancer Research and Director of the Stony Brook University Cancer Center, whose team of researchers at SBU found quantitative evidence proving that extrinsic risk factors, such as environmental exposures and behaviors, weigh heavily on the development of a vast majority of cancers?

Or how about Ruchi Shah ’16, a recent graduate, who received first place among all undergraduate and graduate students in the category Medicine and Public Health at the 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting? She is conducting research on keratin 17 expression in cancer based on her work with pharmacology graduate student Luisa Escobar-Hoyos in the laboratory of Dr. Kenneth Shroyer, Chair of Stony Brook’s Department of Pathology.

And now, through our affiliation with Mount Sinai Health System, the opportunities for amazing science to spring from our collaborative efforts are truly boundless. We look forward to working with Mount Sinai on large-scale research and clinical collaborations that will transform healthcare from Manhattan to Montauk and beyond.

These stories in the current issue of Medicine Today are just a couple examples of how our curiosity leads to new solutions, thanks to our exceptional leadership. We are a driven and imaginative academic medical community, working across boundaries to come up with tomorrow’s big ideas in a complex, connected world.

These are truly among the “best ideas in medicine.”

Kenneth Kaushansky, MD
Senior Vice President, Health Sciences
Dean, School of Medicine
Stony Brook Medicine