Neomi Shah, MD, MPH, MS – Lab Director, Principal Investigator
Dr. Neomi Shah is the System Vice Chair for Faculty Affairs in the Department of Medicine, and Professor (with Tenure) in the Department of Medicine, and Associate Dean for Faculty advancement in the Office of Faculty Development at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. In addition, she is the Director of Clinical Strategy and Oversight for the Respiratory Institute. Dr. Shah is board-certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine. She completed her clinical and research fellowship in Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep at Yale University School of Medicine. During her fellowship, she also earned a Master’s in Public Health from the Yale School of Public Health. Dr. Shah’s research has been focused on understanding the complex relationship between obstructive sleep apnea and cardiovascular disease. She is actively funded by the NIH (NHLBI). She has partnered her research with leading experts in cardiovascular imaging and is a standing member of an NIH Study Section. She has served as the Chair of the American Thoracic Society’s Sleep and Respiratory Biology Assembly’s Program Committee and serves as the Chair of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s Sleep Research Career Development Committee. Dr. Shah has also completed a Masters in Health Care Delivery Leadership at Mount Sinai. After completing fellowship, Dr. Shah was a faculty member at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore prior to joining Mount Sinai.
Samira Khan, MPH – Research Manager
Samira has been working at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine since 2017, where she started as a research program coordinator, after completing her Master’s in Public Health from Hofstra University. She was then promoted to research manager for Dr. Shah’s lab in 2019, where she significantly contributes to clinical research operations, project development, and data management and has assisted with approximately 18 grant applications. In addition to this, she has also taken on the role of Assistant Director of Research and Clinical Initiatives for the Respiratory Institute, where she has been working with divisional leadership towards developing a Respiratory Service Line, tracking quality metrics and health outcomes, implementing clinical initiatives and quality improvement projects, and assisting with the development of new research initiatives.
Mayte Suarez Farinas, PhD – Co-Investigator
Dr. Mayte Suarez-Fariñas is a distinguished biostatistician and machine learning expert, who has made pivotal contributions as a co-investigator in numerous studies within the Shah Lab. With a profound expertise spanning clinical trials design, statistical methodologies, data mining, and bioinformatics techniques, she has excelled in analyzing diverse high throughput data modalities, including arrays, next-generation sequencing, metabolomics, and proteomics. Currently serving as a Research Assistant Professor at the Laboratory of Investigative Dermatology and co-director of the biostatistics team at the Rockefeller University Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSA), Dr. Suarez-Fariñas shapes innovative methodologies for clinical and research protocols, leveraging her proficiency in multivariate analysis, time series, and machine learning. Committed to addressing complex challenges in biomedical research, her long-term goal is to develop robust statistical techniques tailored to specific disease models, focusing on inflammatory skin diseases like atopic dermatitis, to facilitate breakthroughs in understanding and treatment.
Phil Robson, PhD – Co-Investigator
Dr. Phil Robson, an Instructor of Radiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, serves as a co-investigator in the Shah Lab, specializing in innovative MR and PET/MR imaging methods, particularly in cardiovascular applications. With over two decades of MRI research experience, including extensive work in multi-modality imaging of atherosclerosis and cardiac disease, Dr. Robson leads the Clinical Trials Unit (CTU) at the BioMedical Engineering and Imaging Institute (BMEII), overseeing clinical trial implementation for various investigators and industry sponsors. His pioneering contributions include advancements in attenuation and motion correction for cardiac PET/MR imaging, notably in coronary artery plaque micro-calcification assessment using 18F-sodium fluoride PET/MR. Dr. Robson’s current research focuses on further refining PET/MR methods, novel MR imaging contrasts for coronary imaging, and expanding PET/MR and PET/CT applications to cardiomyopathies and inflammatory conditions, including post-COVID syndrome.
Vaishnavi Kundel, MD
Dr. Vaishnavi Kundel serves as an Associate Professor of Medicine and Program Director of the Sleep Medicine Fellowship in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, having joined the faculty subsequent to completing her Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine Fellowships at Mount Sinai in 2019, and then also earned her Master’s in Science and Clinical Research at Mount Sinai in 2022. Recognized as a physician-scientist, she has garnered various accolades including the American Thoracic Society (ATS) ASPIRE Fellowship Award in 2018 and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) Physician-Scientist Training Award in 2019. More recently, she secured the AASM Bridge to Success Award for Early Career Investigators and the NIH K23 Career Development Award (CDA) to advance her research endeavors. Dr. Kundel’s research delves into the correlation between sleep disorders and cardiometabolic disease utilizing advanced imaging techniques and novel biomarkers. She has contributed to numerous publications based on data from diverse cohorts, exploring themes such as vascular inflammation and visceral adipose tissue inflammation in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) using hybrid PET/MRI imaging. Currently, through her NIH CDA, she investigates the link between short sleep duration/sleep irregularity, atherosclerosis, and visceral adiposity, while her AASM Bridge Award supports research on the biological mechanisms underlying chronic short sleep duration and sleep irregularity. Engaged in various projects including clinical trials and collaborations with epidemiological cohorts, Dr. Kundel continues to make significant contributions to the field of sleep medicine and pulmonary research.
Oren Cohen, MD
Dr. Oren Cohen, an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine at Mount Sinai, is a physician-scientist with a focus on obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). With extensive training in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary and Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, he has emerged as a leading researcher in the field. Dr. Cohen’s collaborative efforts with Dr. Neomi Shah have been pivotal, particularly in exploring machine learning approaches in analyzing randomized trials of CPAP therapy for cardiovascular outcomes. In July 2023, Dr. Cohen was appointed Assistant Professor within the Investigator Track, dedicating 75% of his effort to research. His groundbreaking work, published in CHEST, investigated the association between smoking and sleep apnea in the Hispanic Community Health Study / Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL), sparking an interest in sleep apnea and upper airway inflammation. Dr. Cohen’s research focus extends to developing and validating techniques, such as using hybrid FDG-PET/MRI to measure upper airway inflammation. Notably, his studies have demonstrated significant improvements in upper airway inflammation after CPAP therapy in patients with treatment-naïve obstructive sleep apnea. His dedication to advancing the understanding of OSA extends to exploring machine learning approaches and developing disease biomarkers for variable outcomes, heralding an era of precision medicine in OSA.
Shyla Saini, MD
Dr. Shyla Saini completed her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at Duke University and received her medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine. She is currently a third year Pulmonary Critical Care Fellow at Mount Sinai Hospital and serving in the role of Chief Fellow. Dr. Saini is interested in the field of pulmonary vascular disease. Her research explores the intersection between pulmonary hypertension and obstructive sleep apnea through the utilization of PET/MR imaging.
Aaron Gans, MD
Dr. Aaron Gans is a PGY-2 resident in Internal Medicine at The Mount Sinai Hospital (MSH) with an interest in pulmonary critical care medicine, applying to PCCM fellowships summer 2024. Before residency at MSH, Aaron received his M.D. from the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Columbia University in 2022, an M.A. in Chinese Politics at SOAS, University of London and his B.A. in Slavic Studies from Brown University in 2009. Before turning to Medicine, Aaron worked as a journalist in Beijing, China, and as a program officer managing foreign aid grants funded by USAID and the U.S. Department of State. Since beginning his journey in medicine, Aaron has been focused on critical care research, sleep medicine, obstructive lung disease, and medical education. Specifically, Aaron is working on projects to assess compliance with, and predict outcomes based on ROX-index concordant care at MSH; AI-driven analysis of biomarkers and clinical phenotypes in patients with high-risk COPD phenotypes using MSH’s BioMe biobank; and is currently developing a project in Dr. Shah’s lab to study inflammatory change in pericardial adipose tissue as seen on FDG-PET imaging in non-sleepy OSA patients pre- and post-treatment with CPAP. Aaron looks forward to growing his skills-base in machine learning while working with Dr. Shah’s team.
Jennifer Prevot, MD
Dr. Jennifer Prevot completed her undergraduate degree in Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Florida. She completed her medical degree at Florida Atlantic University and her internal medicine residency and Emory University. She is currently a second year Pulmonary and Critical Care fellow and Mount Sinai Hospital. She is interested in pulmonary physiology and cardiometabolic risk factors in patients with respiratory disorders. She is currently working on a project analyzing visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue metabolic activity using PET/MRI in patient with obstructive sleep apnea.
Taylor Treacy, MD
Dr. Taylor Treacy is a current internal medicine pgy-3 resident at Mount Sinai with plans to pursue fellowship in pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine. Her current research investigates abnormal clinical and imaging features associated with electrophysiological study in cardiac sarcoidosis patients with mildly impaired left ventricular ejection function in order to help risk stratify patients for implantable cardioverter-defibrillators.
Kavya Devarakonda, PhD
Dr. Kavya Devarakonda is a scientific writing consultant working with the Shah lab and collaborators. She earned her PhD in neuroscience from the Icahn School of Medicine in 2021. Before that, she spent two years at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disorders as a postbaccalaureate fellow and graduated from Georgetown University in 2013 with a B.S. in neurobiology. Currently, she helps biomedical researchers across the country communicate their science. For more information about her work and services, please visit her website: www.kavyadevarakonda.com.
Zainab Al-Taie, PhD
Dr. Zainab Al-Taie is a postdoctoral fellow in Bioinformatics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, specializes in high-throughput biomedical data analysis, encompassing bulk and single-cell analysis, and excels in developing machine learning pipelines and advanced statistical methods to discern patient subgroups with consistent treatment responses. With a PhD in Data Science and Informatics from the University of Missouri, she focused on explainable Artificial Intelligence for patient stratification and drug repositioning, complemented by a Master of Science in Computer Science where she developed computational algorithms for ontology-based biological networks, yielding insights into biological mechanisms for precision medicine. At Mount Sinai, she leads projects in high-throughput biomedical data analysis and machine learning applications, with a keen focus on causality, survival analysis, and patient stratification to enhance understanding of biological systems and improve outcomes in complex diseases, amalgamating computational and bioinformatics skills to advance precision medicine.
Brian Lee, MS
Brian is a master’s level biostatistician from Taipei, Taiwan. He works across clinical, omics, and population health research as a staff member at the Center for Biostatistics. He believes in the disinterestedness of his scientific work and strives to offer a critical eye to any collaborative projects. He is especially excited about data visualization and likes to explore sports and the arts quantitatively. He holds an MS in Biostatistics from Columbia University and a BA in Biology from Vassar College.