Mount Sinai’s Raja Flores, MD, Honored with the Distinguished Alumni Service Award at NYU 2019 CAS Baccalaureate Ceremony
Raja M. Flores, MD, Founding Chairman of the Department of Thoracic Surgery at the Mount Sinai Health System, was honored by New York University with the Distinguished Alumni Service Award, which recognizes his accomplishments and services to NYU as both a student and alumnus. The award was presented on Tuesday, May 21 at the 2019 College of Arts & Science Baccalaureate Ceremonies at Radio City Music Hall.
Dr. Flores attended NYU from 1984 to 1988, receiving a full scholarship through the Higher Education Opportunity Program. “I am honored to receive this award and grateful for the opportunities I received. The scholarship helped me achieve my dreams and I’m happy to give back,” he says. Now as an alumnus, he has been deeply involved in helping students. On a professional level, he provides guidance to medical students and opportunities to shadow him in the operating room, and as benefactor, scholarships that enable them to pursue their dreams. Dr. Flores is also an active member of the NYU Arts and Science Board of Overseers.
“I was very humbled to receive this award because I’m the one who feels like I owe so much to NYU for giving me the opportunity to live out my dreams” says Dr. Flores, who is also the Steven and Ann Ames Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Dr. Flores is a world-renowned thoracic surgeon known for his technical skill and life-long work on lung and esophageal cancer, mesothelioma and asbestos-related diseases. He established the VATS lobectomy, a minimally invasive approach using three small incisions, as the gold standard in the surgical treatment of lung cancer. He has one of the largest VATS lobectomy experiences in the world and has published and presented this data at national and international meetings. His research has produced more than 200 publications and he was the Principal Investigator of a $4.8 million RO1 grant, to study the effect of asbestos contamination in the town of Libby, Montana.
After Dr. Flores received his undergraduate degree in biochemistry at NYU, he went on to complete a master’s degree in biostatistics from Columbia University. He then attended Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he received his medical degree in 1992. He then spent five years at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, completing a General Surgery Internship and Residency. From there, he pursued a Thoracic Oncology Clinical Research Fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Dana Faber Cancer Institute/CALGB in Boston, and his Cardiothoracic Surgery Residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
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.
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