Four Weill Cornell Medicine investigators have received Ritu Banga Impact in Healthcare Research Awards. Endowed through a generous $5 million gift from Board of Fellows member Ritu Banga and her husband, Ajay Banga, each $50,000 award supports outstanding research aimed at closing knowledge gaps in clinical care to equalize outcomes across different populations.
“We are grateful to Board of Fellows member Ritu Banga and Ajay Banga for their vision in supporting groundbreaking research that challenges one-size-fits all treatment paradigms, and has the potential to transform patient care,” said Dr. Florencia Marcucci, associate dean for research at Weill Cornell Medicine.
This year’s award winners:
Dr. Revathy Chottekalapanda
Dr. Revathy Chottekalapanda
assistant professor of neuroscience in psychiatry
Project Title: Patient-Specific Cellular Models of Depression and Treatment Response
Brain-imaging studies show that communication between different brain regions is often altered in people with depression, yet it remains unclear how these changes relate to the behavior of individual brain cells. Antidepressant medications also do not work for everyone, and responses vary widely from person to person, suggesting that biological differences between individuals play an important role.
To better understand these differences, Dr. Chottekalapanda and his team developed a patient-specific cellular model of depression using a noninvasive approach. Blood samples donated by individuals with depression are used to generate stem cells, which are then converted into neurons like those found in the human brain. This allows the investigators to study how patient-derived neurons from different patients behave, communicate and respond to stress and antidepressant medications in a controlled laboratory setting.
One key strength of this approach is that each participant is carefully characterized using brain imaging, clinical symptoms, family history and past treatment responses. By combining these data with measurements from patient-derived neurons, the team can link brain-level changes seen in imaging to underlying cellular processes. Ultimately, this research aims to explain the biological basis of depression and help predict which treatments will work best for each individual, supporting the development of more personalized and effective therapies.
Dr. Ava Liberman
Dr. Ava Liberman
Victor and Tara Menezes Clinical Scholar in Neuroscience, assistant professor of neurology
Project Title: Portable, Low-Field Brain MRI for Minor Stroke in the Emergency Department (PELED)
Dr. Liberman’s proposed research seeks to determine if a new neuroimaging technique using magnets that can be moved to the patient can reliably identify stroke when neurological symptoms are mild. The project seeks to have direct clinical impact by improving existing processes of stroke detection. This work is relevant to public health, filling a knowledge gap regarding the utility of this new magnetic imaging modality and whether or not it can be used in a busy emergency department. If this new imaging strategy is reliable, the project may greatly improve diagnostic quality and safety for patients with neurological complaints. The work may also eventually help reduce the national burden of stroke, which is substantial, by making sure patients with strokes are identified in a timely fashion so that they can be treated correctly with evidence-based medicines to prevent another adverse medical event, such as recurrent stroke.
Dr. Himel Mallick
Dr. Himel Mallick
assistant professor of population health sciences
Project Title: Development and Validation of an AI-Enhanced Wearable Biomarker for Early Detection of Covert Hepatic Encephalopathy
Cirrhosis affects millions worldwide and often leads to a condition called covert hepatic encephalopathy (CHE), which causes subtle problems in thinking, attention and sleep. Because these early changes are hard to notice and standard tests are rarely used in routine clinic visits, many patients decline for months before the condition is recognized. Earlier detection would allow doctors to adjust medications, prevent hospitalizations and improve quality of life. However, existing tools are poorly suited for continuous, day-to-day monitoring.
Wearable devices offer a new opportunity to fill this gap through passive monitoring of sleep, heart activity, temperature and daily rhythms using rings and watches. In a recent Weill Cornell study, 111 cirrhosis patients wore a small sensor nightly for up to six months. These data show that patients with early cognitive difficulties often have more irregular sleep, more fragmented rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and greater night-to-night changes in autonomic function.
Dr. Mallick’s project will use this real-world data to develop the first digital tool that can detect CHE by analyzing sleep and heart rate patterns alone. The goal is to create a simple, reliable score that clinicians can use to identify patients who may be developing cognitive problems long before these issues become obvious. By making continuous monitoring possible outside the hospital, this research seeks to potentially transform how we care for people with cirrhosis, reducing unnecessary suffering and enabling earlier, more effective treatment, with broader implications for the use of wearables and AI to detect and manage other chronic neurological complications.
Dr. Sasha Fahme
Dr. Sasha Fahme
assistant professor of medicine
Project Title: Engaging Male Sexual Partners of Syrian Refugee Women in Care: An implementation science study to adapt, pilot-test, and evaluate the StepUp partner treatment intervention
Syrian refugee women in Lebanon are among the world’s largest and most vulnerable forcibly displaced populations, with a high burden of bacterial vaginosis. Roughly one in four Syrian refugee women will experience recurrence of bacterial vaginosis within three months of receiving treatment.
A groundbreaking clinical trial, conducted in Australian sexual health clinics, recently demonstrated that bacterial vaginosis may be sexually transmitted, as the treatment of male partners significantly diminished the risk of bacterial vaginosis recurrence in affected women. Dr. Fahme’s study aims to adapt this intervention to the Syrian refugee context, where structural and sociocultural challenges to healthcare accessibility must be addressed to successfully engage refugees in care. Building on prior research with this vulnerable population, the team aim to address barriers to men’s healthcare accessibility by empowering Syrian refugee men to serve as community health workers to engage men and facilitate treatment. They also aim to incorporate bacterial vaginosis treatment for additional female spouses in the context of polygynous marriages, and administer the refined intervention to 100 couples and evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of this model in this community. They will further assess the effect of this pilot intervention on bacterial vaginosis recurrence.
Taken together, these findings will aid in the development of a future clinical trial, which will examine the impact of this adapted intervention on reducing bacterial vaginosis recurrence in Syrian refugee women. The investigators' results may be adopted and applied to similar refugee communities in resource-limited settings, with potential implications for millions of women worldwide.
