On Friday, June 14, at 6:30 a.m., a highly caffeinated cohort of Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) faculty, staff, post-docs, and graduate students boarded a charter bus at the WCM Main Building, 1300 York Ave., in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and traveled some 240 rural New England miles northwest to Cornell University (CU) in Ithaca, N.Y., for the Cornell Cross Campus Symposium (CCCS), "Engineering in Cardiovascular Health, Disease, and Treatment," a two-day meeting of CU and WCM cardiovascular researchers and clinicians.
Jeffrey Ketterling, Ph.D., Professor of Biomedical Engineering in Radiology, co-chaired the interdepartmental meeting alongside Jonathan Butcher, Ph.D., Professor, Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering; Jiwon Kim, M.D., Associate Professor in the Cardiovascular Division of the Department of Medicine, Director, Cardiovascular Imaging Program, and Bruce B. Lerman, M.D., Clinical Scholar; and Jonathan Weinsaft, M.D., A.M. Gotto Jr. Professor in Atherosclerosis and Lipid Research and Chief, Division of Cardiology.
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Collaboration across the two Cornell campuses dates to 1898, when, feeling Ithaca was too quaint to offer adequate clinical training, the university, which was founded in 1865, established its medical college in New York City. Today, events like CCCS keep the Cornell connection alive. At this year’s meeting, which featured opening remarks from WCM Dean Robert A. Harrington, the medical college was well represented.
During three sessions—"Cardiovascular Imaging Technology and Machine Learning," "Animals Models, Tissue Engineering, Molecular," and "Veterinary and Clinical Therapy/Surgery"—14 of the 27 speakers came from WCM. Additionally, WCM personnel participated in the poster session and four working groups.
Designed to yield future funded research endeavors, the myriad research topics discussed during the One-Cornell-funded Corness Cross Campus Symposium ultimately had one common theme: translating engineering-based cardiovascular research into clinical practice. "Bringing together talented engineers and clinicians who look at different aspects of cardiovascular disease allowed us to bridge the geographical distance between campuses and identify promising areas of research that will have clinical impact in the near or long term," said co-chair Dr. Jeffrey Ketterling. "The success of this inaugural meeting has motivated us to make it an annual event."