Joshua Cook is an endocrinologist and clinical investigator at Columbia, studying mechanisms and consequences of hyperinsulinemia in humans. Josh is a proud New Jerseyan by birth and rearing. He attended college at the University of Pennsylvania and then earned a master’s in clinical biochemistry at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. For the past 17 years, he has made Columbia his home. He graduated from the MD/PhD program at VP&S after performing his doctoral research under the mentorship of Mimmo Accili, did his internal medicine residency and endocrinology fellowship at CUIMC, and joined the faculty as assistant professor in 2021. He is currently funded by a K23 grant from NIDDK and leads a team of three that has come to be called the Columbia Laboratory for Advanced Metabolic Profiling, or CLAMP. The CLAMP co-opts existing drugs and adapts metabolic research methods for novel applications in the study of human hyperinsulinemia

Dr. Kushal K. Dey is an Assistant Professor (Josie Robertson Investigator) in the Computational and Systems Biology program at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Kushal is a statistical geneticist by training, with PhD from University of Chicago and postdoctoral training from Harvard University. His lab’s primary focus is to develop AI/ML and statistical frameworks that integrate single-cell and functional genomics with human disease genetics to advance precision medicine. In recent times, a major area of research focus in the lab is decoding Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) biology by mapping risk variants to effector genes, pathways, and cellular programs through a combination of in-vitro experiments in pancreatic islets and in-vivo population genetic studies. By linking context-specific cellular responses to inherited risk, his work aims to uncover mechanisms of β-cell dysfunction and identify actionable therapeutic opportunities for T2D.

Michael S Garshick, MD, MS is a Cardiologist and Assistant Professor of Medicine and Dermatology at NYU Langone Health. Dr Garshick graduated from Tufts University Magna cum laude and Tufts University School of Medicine with Alpha Omega Alpha honors. He completed an internship and residency at Columbia University Medical Center, and cardiology fellowship, a T32 research fellowship, and a Master’s program in clinical investigation at NYU Langone Health. Dr. Garshick directs the Cardio-Rheumatology program, dedicated to the recognition and management of the atherothrombotic complications of autoimmunity, and also the subclinical CVD program, which utilizes innovative and multi-modality imaging tools to measure subclinical atherosclerosis. He is co-chair and co-founder of the Cardio-Rheumatology working group within the American College of Cardiology and directs a yearly cardio-inflammation symposium, designed to advance the specialty of cardio-rheumatology. Dr. Garshick’s translational research laboratory focuses on a multi-omics (proteomics and transcriptomic) approach to studying platelet and endothelial cell biology in psoriasis and other inflammatory conditions and has held funding from the American Heart Association, National Psoriasis Foundation, and the NIH.

Jesse M. Platt, MD, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in Gastroenterology and the Center for Metabolic Health at Weill Cornell Medicine. His laboratory asks how changes in cellular compartmentalization reshape the biology of human disease. By studying biomolecular condensates—dynamic, membraneless organelles that organize key reactions— and the mobility of proteins within cells, his group seeks to uncover how these physical processes maintain cellular health and how their disruption drives pathology. His laboratory has identified two fundamental mechanisms by which compartmentalization fails in disease: condensate dysfunction, in which membraneless compartments lose integrity and fail to coordinate molecular processes, and proteolethargy, a distinct pathology of impaired protein mobility that prevents proteins from reaching their targets and reduces protein function. Together, this work demonstrates that both compartment integrity and protein mobility are fundamental to understanding human disease. His work has been recognized by Doris Duke Foundation, Harvard Catalyst, and NIDDK.

Alus Xiaoli, PhD, is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine (Endocrinology) at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He earned his PhD in Animal Nutrition from Okayama University (Japan) and completed his postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Fajun Yang at Einstein. He studies how transcription factors and cofactors—particularly the multi-subunit Mediator complex—regulate gene expression programs that control metabolism in liver, adipose tissue, and skeletal muscle. Using complementary biochemical and genetic approaches, his work aims to define regulatory networks that drive metabolic homeostasis and contribute to obesity, diabetes, and MASLD (metabolic dysfunction–associated steatotic liver disease).