Gamze Gürsoy, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University, has been honored as a Herbert and Florence Irving Scholar for the 2024-2027 cohort.
In the late 1980’s, Herbert and Florence Irving created a generous endowment to support clinical and translational research at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S) at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC). Part of this endowment supports awards of $180,000 unrestricted funds as Florence and Herbert Irving clinical research career awards (“Irving Scholars”) for junior faculty members involved in clinical and translational research. The scholarship also comes with a named professorship. Gürsoy will have the title of “Herbert Irving Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics” in the next three years.
Irving Scholars are selected on the basis of research proposals that reflect independent, well-developed scientific initiatives in clinical investigation. Gürsoy’s project title is “Overcoming Privacy Challenges in Machine Learning for Healthcare.”
A Core Faculty Member at the New York Genome Center (NYGC), Gürsoy focuses her research on biomedical data privacy — both the challenges being faced around the era of mass data, as well as the opportunities available to aid biomedical data science through the responsible sharing of healthcare data. Her lab collaborates on harmonizing diverse fields such as biology, bioinformatics, molecular biology, engineering, and cryptography to answer fundamental questions such as: (1) What are the metrics to quantify hidden information leakage? and (2) What are the innovative methodologies for privacy-preserving AI with biomedical data?
There have been more than 150 Irving Scholars since the program was launched in 1987, and Gürsoy is the fourth member of the Department of Biomedical Informatics to achieve this honor. The others are Chunhua Weng (2010-13), Nicholas Tatonetti (2015-2018) and Lena Mamykina (2017-2020).
Read more about Gürsoy’s research, or visit her lab page to learn more about her team’s ongoing work. For more information on the 2024 Irving Scholars, click here.
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About the New York Genome Center
The New York Genome Center (NYGC) is an independent, nonprofit academic research institution that serves as a multi-institutional hub for collaborative genomic research. Leveraging our strengths in technology development, computational biology, and whole genome sequencing, our mission is to advance genomic science and its application to novel biomedical discoveries. NYGC’s areas of focus include the development of computational and experimental genomic methods and disease-focused research to advance the understanding of the genetic basis of cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and neuropsychiatric disease. We are committed to prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is fundamental to promoting greater collaboration, innovation, and discovery. For more information, visit https://www.nygenome.org/.
About Columbia University’s Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI)
Located on the Columbia University Medical Center (CUIMC) campus, the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) is both an academic department and an information services partner to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. The DBMI research mission is to produce theoretical and practical advances in AI, data science, and human-computer interaction, which will lead to better health and new biomedical knowledge.
