Three scientists from Weill Cornell Medicine were honored this week with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the U.S. government’s highest honor for outstanding early-career scientists and engineers.
Drs. Steven Josefowicz, Ekta Khurana And Kristen Pleil were among 400 early-career scientists and engineers to receive this award, announced January 14 by the White House.
The award, known as PECASE, was established in 1996 by President Bill Clinton to recognize early-career scientists and engineers who demonstrate exceptional leadership potential. It recognizes innovative and far-reaching developments in science and technology; increases awareness of careers in science and engineering; recognizes the scientific missions of participating agencies; improves links between research and impacts on society; and highlights the importance of science and technology to the nation’s future, according to the White House press release.
“We are so excited for Drs. Josefowicz, Khurana and Pleil, and we congratulate them on this most deserved distinction,” said Dr. Robert A. HarringtonStephen and Suzanne Weiss, deans of Weill Cornell Medicine. “They and their teams have advanced their fields of study through achievements in scholarship and innovative research.” Each is an outstanding example of our talented and distinguished faculty here at Weill Cornell.
Dr. Steven Josefowicz
Dr. Josefowicz is an associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and a member of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center and the Gale and Ira Drukier Institute for Children’s Health at Weill Cornell Medicine. His research focuses on understanding how large genomes of complex organisms are regulated at the epigenetic level to direct development and rapid environmental responses, and how aberrant regulation leads to disease. In one of these studiesDr. Josefowicz and colleagues revealed how the severity of COVID-19 triggered changes in DNA packaging that led to lasting alterations in the body’s immune response. The findings could explain why some people experience prolonged inflammation and “long COVID” after SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Dr Ekta Khurana
Dr. Khurana is a WorldQuant Foundation Investigator, Associate Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, Co-Lead of the Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics Program at Meyer Cancer Center, and a member of the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Khurana’s laboratory develops new approaches integrating genomics, computational biology, and systems biology to understand the impact of differences between individual genomes on human diseases. She and her colleagues recently discovered and defined a relatively common subtype of hormone therapy-resistant, stem cell-like prostate cancer. His lab has developed new computational approaches to understanding the role of non-protein coding regions in cancer. Another IT approach from his lab, called Cancer Regulatory Networks and Susceptibilities, could help discover key proteins that would make good drug targets for cancer treatment.
Dr. Kristen Pleil
Dr. Pleil is an associate professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine. She studies in mice how sex and stress hormones regulate how the brain controls alcohol and illicit substance use, as well as other behaviors linked to stress and neuropsychiatric illness. In a recent studyDr. Pleil and his team revealed that the hormone estrogen promotes excessive alcohol consumption in women, leading them to consume large quantities of alcohol, especially in the first 30 minutes after consumption. This discovery built on a previous study from his laboratory who discovered that a subpopulation of neurons in the brain that increase alcohol consumption were more excitable in female mice than in males, and this study showed that estrogens produced in the ovaries act on these neurons to increase their activity and have a pro- effect of drinking in women.