News and Events

Programs and providers of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Weill Cornell Medicine are often the focus of news stories and features appearing in major national media. We invite you to review some stories that typify the breakthrough accomplishments of our remarkable team and highlight the impact our care has had on patient’s lives.

Awards & Honors: February 2025

Three trophies

Dr. Heidi Bender, professor of neuropsychology in neurological surgery, received a Jerry Sweet Leadership Award from the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology and American Board of Clinical Neuropsychology. The award recognizes neuropsychologists who have shown outstanding leadership deemed likely to have a lasting imprint on neuropsychology and acknowledged as exceptionally beneficial to the field.

Dr. Alyson Gorun, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry, received the Edith Sabshin Teaching Award from the American Psychoanalytic Association. This prestigious national honor recognizes psychoanalysts for their outstanding service in non-candidate education.

Dr. Lisa Newman, chief of the section of breast surgery and a professor of surgery, was awarded an honorary fellowship from the West African College of Surgeons. As the college’s highest honor, this award recognizes Dr. Newman’s continued commitment to the enhancement of optimal surgical training in West Africa, fostering collaborations between international surgical colleges and associations in the different regions of the African continent.

A Versatile AI System for Analyzing Series of Medical Images

brain scans

A new AI-based system for analyzing images taken over time can accurately detect changes and predict outcomes, according to a study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell’s Ithaca campus and Cornell Tech. The system’s sensitivity and flexibility could make it useful across a wide range of medical and scientific applications.

The new system, termed LILAC (Learning-based Inference of Longitudinal imAge Changes), is based on an AI approach called machine learning. In the study, which appears Feb. 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers developed the system and demonstrated it on diverse time-series of images—also called “longitudinal” image series—covering developing IVF embryos, healing tissue after wounds and aging brains. The researchers showed that LILAC has a broad ability to identify even very subtle differences between images taken at different times, and to predict related outcome measures such as cognitive scores from brain scans.

Dr. Mert Sabuncu

Dr. Mert Sabuncu

Designing Self-Destructing Bacteria to Make Effective Tuberculosis Vaccines

tuberculosis affects the lungs

Working toward more effective tuberculosis (TB) vaccines, researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have developed two strains of mycobacteria with "kill switches" that can be triggered to stop the bacteria after they activate an immune response. Two preclinical studies, published, Jan. 10 in Nature Microbiology, tackle the challenge of engineering bacteria that are safe for use in controlled human infection trials or as better vaccines. While TB is under control in most developed countries, the disease still kills over a million people a year worldwide.

Dr. Dirk Schnapinger

Dr. Dirk Schnappinger

Spreading easily through the air, Mycobacterium tuberculosis can establish a chronic infection in human lungs, which can turn into a deadly respiratory disease. A safe vaccine called BCG, consisting of a weakened strain of the closely related Mycobacterium bovis, has been available for over a century but has limited efficacy.