Administrative Core

Dr. Hedvig Hricak is Chairman of the Department of Radiology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). She is also a member of the Molecular Pharmacology Program at the Sloan Kettering Institute, and Professor at the Gerstner Sloan Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. She is an international leader in the field of diagnostic radiology and advanced imaging. Dr Hricak’s research focuses on imaging of genitourinary and gynecological cancers, particularly the development of new imaging techniques and validation of imaging biomarkers derived from cross-sectional techniques.

Dr Hricak is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, formerly the Institute of Medicine, and has served on the National Institutes of Health, Board of Scientific Counselors, Scientific Advisory Board of the National Cancer Institute and the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. She has also served on the Nuclear Radiation Study Board (NASB) of the National Academy of Sciences

Dr Hricak is committed to training the next generation of cancer imaging researchers. She directs a number of international research fellowship programs that, through a competitive recruitment process, bring radiologists from all over the world to MSK for training in oncologic imaging, such as body imaging, breast imaging and interventional radiology.

As Co-Leader on the Training and Career Development Core of the U54 CCNY-MSKCC Partnership grant, Dr Hricak works with Dr. Karen Hubbard to continue to develop and expand training opportunities in a robust translational cancer research environment to attract and retain students (particularly minority and low-income students) interested in cancer research – to complete MD, PhD, DO, and MD/PhD programs and to pursue cancer-related research careers. These opportunities are enhanced by educational and training opportunities and increased mentorship and support.

Her overall goal is to help provide opportunities for students and trainees and to build the next generation of scientists. One of her proudest accomplishments is the establishment in 2004 of an educational program Radiology: Giving Back to NYC for high school students from the New York City Department of Education public high schools. In 2013 the Council of the City of New York issued a proclamation citing Dr Hricak’s guidance and support for high school students stating that the 18th day of April in 2013 is Radiology/Science Careers Awareness & Exploration Day for High School Juniors. The overall goal of the program is to inspire and educate students and teachers about careers in healthcare with a focus on STEM careers. The Partnership supports summer internships in STEM for the five high school students who won the competition

Dr. Hubbard is a molecular biologist who studies gene expression during cellular aging. Her research focuses on RNA metabolism during aging and the relationship between cell death (apoptosis) and aging. She is also the director of the partnership program with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Erica Lubetkin an associate medical professor in the Department of Community Health and Social Medicine at the CUNY School of Medicine. Her background is in neuroscience (B.S.), internal medicine (M.D.) and public health (M.P.H./health policy and management, effectiveness and outcomes). The majority of her research has examined the performance of patient-reported outcome measures, and she has a strong track-record in measuring health-related quality of life and quantifying the burden of disease due to chronic diseases and health risk behaviors. She also have worked on numerous projects assessing cancer risk beliefs, patient activation, and health literacy in inner-city primary care patients. In terms of teaching, she is the course director for Evidence-Based Medicine, a longitudinal first- and second-year medical student course.

Jennifer Leng is a member of the research faculty of the Immigrant Health and Cancer Disparities laboratory, which facilitates linguistically and culturally sensitive health care services for newcomer populations through research, education, training, program development, policy, and advocacy. Her research interests include developing and testing support and survivorship interventions for Chinese cancer patients; targeting social and economic barriers to cancer care, and studying interventions to address food insecurity among immigrant and minority cancer patients; and community-based cardiovascular disease and cancer risk screening for underserved populations.

Dr. Francesca Gany is the Chief of the Immigrant Health and Cancer Disparities Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Director of the Center for Immigrant Health and Cancer Disparities, and a Director of the community based participatory South Asian Health Initiative. She works to bridge immigrants, minority community members, and the medically underserved with the healthcare system, and to eliminate health disparities. Her groundbreaking work has led to an improvement in health outcomes and to the development of long-term clinical, health policy, and programmatic changes.

Research Interests: Computational Biology, Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, and Artificial Intelligence

Lisa Diamond is a member of the research faculty of the Immigrant Health and Cancer Disparities Service, which facilitates linguistically and culturally sensitive health care services for newcomer populations through research, education, training, program development, policy, and advocacy. Her research focuses on understanding how clinician non-English language proficiency affects the quality of care delivered to patients with limited English proficiency (LEP). Ultimately, she plans to use the results of her research to establish standards for the appropriate use of non-fluent non-English language skills by clinicians and to identify process and outcome measures that capture the quality of cancer care being delivered to LEP patients.

Prior to joining Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Dr. Diamond was a Research Physician and Hospitalist at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute. Her research there included a study funded by The California Endowment to identify better methods for measuring clinician non-English language proficiency and determine physician, patient, and system factors that help explain race/ethnic and language-related disparities in care.

Dr. Diamond is a board-certified internist, focusing on inpatient hospital medicine. She completed medical school at the George Washington University School of Medicine and has a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed her Internal Medicine residency at New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, followed by a fellowship in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at Yale University, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco.

Carlos Riobó is  Professor of Latin American Literatures and Cultures at the Graduate Center and The City College of New York. He is also Professor of Comparative Literature at CCNY  and Chair of his Department of Classical and Modern Languages & Literatures at CCNY. Professor Riobó is the Director of CCNY’s Kaye Scholarship and Co-Director of its Cátedra Mario Vargas Llosa.  He is an Editorial Board member of Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas.
Dr. Riobó was the recipient of the CCNY President’s Award for Outstanding Faculty Service in the Division of Humanities and Arts in 2014. His research interests include nineteenth and twentieth-century Cuban and Argentine literature and cultures. He has appeared on U.S. and international radio and television programs. Professor Riobó has done field research in Havana at the Cuban National Library and Archive, as well as in Argentina, Dominican Republic, France, Portugal, Puerto Rico, and Spain. He has published articles on Manuel Puig, Severo Sarduy, Sigüenza y Góngora, nineteenth-century Argentine literature, Ezra Pound, and Italian and Spanish Medieval Literature, in major refereed journals. Currently, he is working on a book manuscript on the counter archive.  He has taught at Yale University, SUNY Binghamton, Bard College, and Columbia University. In 2017, he was chosen as recipient of an Erasmus+ Staff Mobility Program and invited to teach at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy.
His publications include the books Caught between the Lines: Captives, Frontiers, and National Identity in Argentine Literature and Art(University of Nebraska Press, New Hispanisms: Cultural and Literary Studies series), Sub-versions of the Archive: Manuel Puig’s and Severo Sarduy’s Alternative Identities (Bucknell University Press, 2011); Cuban Intersection of Literary and Urban Spaces (SUNY Press, 2011); Handbook of Contemporary Cuba: Economy, Politics, Civil Society, and Globalization, with Mauricio Font (Paradigm Press, 2013); and, among his many peer-reviewed article are, “Raiding the Anales of the Empire: Sarduy’s Subversions of the Latin American Boom,” Hispanic Review. 81.3 (2013): 331-352, for which he won in 2014 the Latin American Studies Association’s (LASA) Sylvia Molloy Award for the best peer-reviewed humanities article published in 2013 and “Sarduy’s Colibrí and the Search for Discursive Foundations in the Regional Novel” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 41.2 (2017): 54-68