Marta Filizola, PhD, Appointed Dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Marta Filizola, PhD, has been appointed Dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS), effective May 1, 2016. Recognized as an innovative researcher and a strong adviser and mentor to students and trainees at all levels, Dr. Filizola will oversee the academic and administrative functions of all PhD and master’s programs, as well as the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs.
“I am both excited and humbled by the opportunity to serve as a catalyst for innovation in graduate education at Mount Sinai,” said Dr. Filizola. “I believe that we at Mount Sinai are in the best position to train the next generation of great scientists, to prepare them for a wide range of careers in academia, industry, or even finance. Our goal is to empower students with the skills they need to make a difference in today’s world, and I look forward to working with our terrific researchers and educators to achieve this goal."
According to the 2013-2014 report by the Association of American Medical Colleges, only 16 percent of deans in academic medicine are women. As one of the few female deans and computational biophysics investigators, Dr. Filizola is extremely motivated to increase the participation of women and other minorities in quantitative sciences to help change these statistics.
As the new Dean, Dr. Filizola plans to fully integrate quantitative methods, immersive learning strategies, and digital technologies into the current biomedical education model, to foster collaboration among disciplines to maximize scientific innovation. Dr. Filizola also plans to incorporate more computational thinking into the Graduate School program, made possible by Mount Sinai’s significant investment in computational resources over the past five years and the recruitment of both faculty and students with backgrounds in math, physics, chemistry, computer science, and engineering.
“Dr. Filizola is an exceptional scientist and educator and we are thrilled with her appointment as Dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences,” said Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System. “She will provide extraordinary leadership at our graduate school and provide a roadmap for training the next generation of great scientists.”
Dr. Filizola has been a member of the ISMMS faculty since 2007. She is a Professor of Structural and Chemical Biology, with secondary appointments in Neuroscience and in Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics. Her research has been funded steadily by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and she has served as a grant reviewer for the NIH and other agencies for over 10 years. As Dean, Dr. Filizola will also continue to lead her own research programs. Her laboratory is active in five research projects funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Prior to her new role as Dean, she served as Co-Director of the Structural/Chemical Biology and Molecular Design Program in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and as Co-Director of the Biophysics and Systems Pharmacology Graduate Program. Dr. Filizola completed her postdoctoral work in computational biophysics at the Molecular Research Institute in Mountain View, California, and at the Icahn School of Medicine.
About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the nation’s leading integrated academic health systems and one of the largest in the New York metropolitan area. Its comprehensive system includes seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, over 600 research and clinical laboratories, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing. Together, the Health System comprises approximately 48,000 employees, more than 9,000 physicians, and 8,600 nurses.
As a leading learning health system, Mount Sinai combines clinical expertise with scientific discovery to improve patient care while training the next generation of health care and biomedical leaders. The Health System provides care across every stage of life, from prenatal care through geriatrics, while advancing personalized medicine through artificial intelligence, data science, and biomedical research.
Mount Sinai is consistently recognized among the nation’s leading academic health systems for patient care, research, and education. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 1 in New York by Newsweek and No. 5 on the magazine’s World’s Best Hospitals list. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai ranks No. 11 among U.S. medical schools and No. 1 among freestanding medical schools for National Institutes of Health funding, reflecting the strength of its scientific enterprise and leadership in biomedical research.
