Weill Cornell Medicine announced Tuesday the appointment of Dr. Augustine Choi as the Manhattan medical institution's new dean.
Choi has served as interim dean since June 2016, when he replaced Dr. Laurie Glimcher.
Choi, who was also named Cornell University's provost for medical affairs, joined Weill Cornell in 2013 as the chairman of its department of medicine and the physician-in-chief at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
As dean, Choi will lead the aggressive expansion of the 1,200-doctor medical school faculty's practice into lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. He also will recruit some of the research rainmakers who attract federal funding and encourage doctors and scientists to commercialize their findings. Such efforts could eventually yield licensing revenue and investment returns for Weill Cornell.
Choi was selected after a search conducted by a 19-member committee led by Hunter Rawlings III, interim president of Cornell University, and Jessica Bibliowicz, chairman of the Weill Cornell Board of Overseers. He was unanimously elected to the post by the Board of Overseers and the executive committee of Cornell's Board of Trustees.
"He is absolutely the best person to propel this institution forward and maintain its trajectory of extraordinary growth," Bibliowicz said in a statement. "He can guide our research and academic mission based on his extensive experience as a physician, scientific investigator and entrepreneur."
Choi's National Institutes of Health–funded research focuses on the ways certain molecular, cellular and genetic triggers affect lung diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Before joining Weill Cornell, Choi was a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Choi's predecessor, Glimcher, spent four years leading Weill Cornell Medicine before leaving to become president and chief executive of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She spoke with Crain's last May about the growth in research and clinical revenue at Weill Cornell and her decision to leave.
"Weill Cornell Medicine appoints new dean" originally appeared in Crain's New York Business.
