Internal Medicine Doctors near Saddle Brook, NJ

Biography: Vratika Agarwal, MD, is a non-invasive cardiologist and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the Faculty of Medicine at Columbia University. She is a board-certified cardiologist who specializes inStructural and Valvular Imaging. She is board certified in both echocardiography and cardiac computed tomography. Dr. Agarwal graduated from Deccan College of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad, India. She completed her residency and Cardiology fellowship at Staten Island University Hospital/Northwell Health. She was titled Chief Cardiology Fellow during her fellowship. Later, she completed her Fellowship in Structural Interventional Imaging with New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center.Additionally, at theUniversity of California San Francisco, Vratika Agarwal, MD, completed advanced training for Clinical Research.She came to Columbia University after being at Yale University School of Medicine, where she was part of the structural heart disease team. She mentored Cardiology fellows, Advanced Imaging fellows, and sonographers at theYale School of Medicine. She continues to teach non-cardiologists about the importance and uses of cardiovascular ultrasound while speaking for awareness of the cardiovascular disease in women. In addition, she has provided support back in Hyderabad, India, with initiatives to increase access to healthcare services in underserved areas. Areas of expertise:EchocardiographyTransesophageal echocardiogramValvular heart diseaseTranscatheter valve replacement

Biography: Marwah Abdalla, MD, MPH is a clinical cardiologist, cardiac intensivist, and Florence Irving Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. She is the Director of Education for the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit and is a full-time faculty member in the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health at Columbia. Her areas of expertise include critical care cardiology and hypertension. Dr. Abdalla is board certified in internal medicine, cardiology, and echocardiography. She is also an NIH funded clinical investigator with a research interest in the cardiovascular manifestations of hypertension, assessed by echocardiography, ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, and sleep. Dr. Abdalla received her Medical Degree and Masters in Public Health from Yale School of Medicine and Yale School of Public Health. She was an Intern, Resident, and Chief Resident at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. She completed her training as a cardiology Fellow and Chief Fellow at Columbia University Medical Center.

Biography: Dr. Emily J. Tsai is the Florence Irving Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons and an attending physician at the Center for Advanced Cardiac Care of New York-Presbyterian Hospital at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Board-certified in Cardiovascular Medicine and Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology, Dr. Tsai specializes in caring for heart failure patients who require, or who have received, a ventricular assist device or heart transplant. Dr. Tsai is a magna cum laude graduate in engineering sciences of Harvard College and a cum laude graduate of Harvard Medical School and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology Program. She completed internal medicine residency training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and then cardiology fellowship and advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology training at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. As a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awardee, Dr. Tsai completed post-doctoral basic cardiovascular research training at Johns Hopkins University in the laboratory of Dr. David A. Kass. After fellowship training, Dr. Tsai was recruited to Temple University School of Medicine as an assistant professor of medicine and physiology and a principal investigator in its Cardiovascular Research Center. In 2015, Dr. Tsai joined the faculty of Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and established her laboratory in molecular and integrative cardiac pathophysiology.As a physician-scientist, Dr. Tsai studies the molecular and cellular biology of heart failure with the goal of developing novel therapies. Major areas of research in Dr. Tsai's laboratory include the signaling of soluble guanylyl cyclase (the nitric oxide receptor) in the heart, right heart dysfunction, and cardiac complications associated with COVID-19. Dr. Tsai has been nationally recognized for her scientific achievements by the American College of Cardiology and the Heart Failure Society of America, with their respective Presidential Career Development Award and Jay N. Cohn New Investigator in Basic Sciences Award. She has been awarded several research grants from the National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association, Foundation of Gender Specific Medicine, and the Columbia University Provost's Grants Program. Dr. Tsai has served on national committees of the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, and Heart Failure Society of America.

Biography: Dr. Ersilia M. DeFilippis, FACC, FAHA, FHFSA is a highly accomplished physician and an Assistant Professor of Cardiology and Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She graduated from Yale University summa cum laude with a Bachelors of Arts in Women's Studies and a concentration in Women's Health. Dr. DeFilippis received her medical degree from Weill Cornell Medical College where she was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha honor Society and graduated with an MD with Honors in Research. She was also granted the Janet M. Glasgow-Rubin Memorial Achievement Award for graduating first in her medical school class. She then completed her Internal Medicine residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Subsequently, she finished her fellowships in cardiovascular disease and advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She is board certified in internal medicine, cardiology, and advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology. Her clinical interests include peripartum cardiomyopathy, pregnancy and cardiovascular disease, heart failure, heart transplantation, and mechanical circulatory support. Her research interests include sex-specific outcomes and disparities in advanced heart failure and transplantation as well as the intersection of heart failure and cardio-obstetrics. She is also interested in health disparities and health equity more broadly.She has over 230 peer-reviewed publications and has published in leading journals including JAMA Cardiology, Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, Circulation: Heart Failure; JACC and JACC: Heart Failure. She has also given invited talks at multiple national and international conferences. She received the 2024 American Society of Transplantation Clinical Career Development Achievement Award for her research endeavors and was named a 2025 Lewis Katz Scholar by the Division of Cardiology. She was a Co-Chair of the ISHLT Consensus Statement on Reproductive Health after Thoracic Transplantation and has served as a member of various committees for the American College of Cardiology, Heart Failure Society of America, American Heart Association, and American Society of Transplantation. She is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Women's Health Community of Practice of the American Society of Transplantation and the Diverse Populations Editor for the Journal of Cardiac Failure. She is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, Heart Failure Society of America, and American Heart Association.

Biography: Dr. Karan Wats is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Cardiologist, specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with advanced heart failure. His practice includes those requiring left ventricular assist device or heart transplantation. He also attends as a cardiac intensivist. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Disease, Echocardiography, Nuclear Cardiology, Hypertension and Advanced Heart Failure & Transplant Cardiology. Dr. Wats received his medical degree from Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, India. He completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Maimonides Medical Center. He then went on to do Hypertension Research fellowship at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai followed by Cardiology fellowship at Maimonides Medical Center and Advanced Heart Failure, Transplant fellowship at Westchester Medical Center. He is particularly interested in infiltrative cardiomyopathy and currently serves as an associate director for amyloid program.

Biography: Dr. Gomez-Simmonds' research interests entail understanding the molecular factors that potentiate the acquisition and dissemination of multidrug resistance among hospital-associated pathogens. Her current projects focus on developing sequencing-based methods for investigating the epidemiology and transmission of multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria at CUIMC such as carbapenem-resistant and ESBL-producing Enterobacterales. She is particularly interested in characterizing the repertoire of antibiotic resistance genes and associated mobile genetic elements in these pathogens. Additional research interests include identifying clinical risk factors and optimal therapeutic regimens for multidrug-resistant bacterial infections and investigating the clinical and microbiome factors associated with colonization and subsequent infection with hospital-associated pathogens such as Clostridioides difficile.

Biography: Dr. Rachel Gordon, MD is an Infectious Disease Specialist who practices in New York, NY. She is 51 years old and has been practicing for 36 years. Dr. Rachel Gordon, MD is affiliated with NewYork-Presbyterian/The Allen Hospital and Newyork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center.

Biography: Dr Franklin Lowy is the Clyde '56 and Helen Wu professor of medicine and pathology & cell biology (in epidemiology) in the Division of Infectious Diseases in the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. His laboratory investigates the pathogenesis and epidemiology of Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis infections.

Biography: Dr. Anne-Catrin Uhlemann is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.

Biography: Dr.Tina Wangisthe Associate HospitalEpidemiologistforNewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center.In addition to this, she spends a portion of her time on the inpatient clinical service at both the Columbia and Allen Hospitals. She completed her fellowship training at Weill Cornell Medicine, where she worked closely with the Hospital Epidemiology teams at both Cornell and Columbia, before joining the Columbia Infectious Diseases Division and Infection Prevention & Control Department in 2020.

Biography: As an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist, Dr. Jessica Justman has worked for over two decades to advance HIV prevention, care, and treatment and to pioneer a precision approach to understanding the global HIV epidemic. She is Senior Technical Director at ICAP, a global public health center at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. In this role, she oversees the development and strengthening of ICAP's clinical, laboratory, strategic information and survey activities across a range of global projects. As a Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Dr. Justman's research interests focus on HIV prevention and HIV epidemiology. Dr. Justman's HIV prevention research began over 20 years ago when she was the founding site leader for the NIH-funded Bronx Prevention Center clinical research site. The Bronx site, along with the Harlem Prevention Center and the Eswatini Prevention Center, is part of the ICAP at Columbia Clinical Trials Unit, for which Dr. Justman serves as co-principal investigator. These research sites have helped to conduct a wide range of HIV prevention research, including studies on injectable PrEP. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, Dr. Justman applied lessons from HIV programs and research to a wide range of COVID-19 activities, including COVID-19 surveys, vaccine trials, and early treatment trials. Beginning in 2014, she spearheaded the PEPFAR-funded Population-based HIV Impact Assessment (PHIA) Project's nationally representative surveys which have measured access to care and treatment and, by using novel HIV recency assays, HIV incidence in 20 African and Caribbean countries. Results from the PHIA surveys have transformed global HIV programming by highlighting the need for more effective and targeted HIV testing approaches. Dr. Justman was also principal investigator of the TRACE initiative, a technical assistance program supported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that helps ministries of health use HIV recency testing to strengthen the precision of HIV infection surveillance systems and guide HIV prevention programs.

Biography: Dr. Winchester has had a sustained interest in human autoimmunity. His earlier studies defined the molecular importance of rheumatoid factors, other autoantibodies and immune complexes in human disease. Moreover, Dr. Winchester was involved in the early identification and tissue expression of human MHC class II molecules. As importantly, his studies of the polymorphisms of MHC molecules have provided the basis of establishing the link between MHC genotype and susceptibility to autoimmunity. For example in the late 1980's Dr. Winchester and colleagues showed that susceptibility to rheumatoid arthritis was determined by sequences in the b chain of MHC class II molecules. This observation led to the shared MHC 'epitope' hypothesis which provides a molecular basis for susceptibility to rheumatoid arthritis associated with a region on the MHC molecule involved in both binding of the peptide and interacting with the TCR. This seminal discovery has emphasized the importance of the modern means of HLA typing which involves DNA sequencing of the MHC genes and the theoretical basis for the discovery of antigens that initiate autoimmune disease. In recent years Dr. Winchester has also focused on DNA and peptide sequence analysis of T cell receptor a and b chains in order to define the changes in the TCR repertoire associated with autoimmunity. Email: rjw8@cumc.columbia.edu

Biography: Yelitza Castanos, DNP, AGPCNP-BC,is an adult-gerontology nurse practitioner and an assistant professor of nursing at Columbia University School of Nursing, where she completed her Master's in Scienceand Doctor in Nursing Practice. She earned her Bachelor's in Nursing from the College of New Rochelle. She has over nine years of nursing experience in psychiatric nursing, community health, leadership, and primary care. She is board certified as an Adult-Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. She also has subspecialty training in women's health, which includes cervical cancer screening, family planning, and well-woman exams. Her clinical interests include disease prevention, health promotion, complex chronic illness management, and family planning.Castanos' research interests focus on palliative care, women's health, and endocrinology.

Biography: Jane Chaiyasit, DNP, AGPCNP-C, is an adult-gerontology primary care nurse practitioner and Assistant Professor of Nursing at Columbia University School of Nursing. She received her Bachelor's of Science in Nursing (BS), Master's of Science in Nursing(MS), and her Doctorate of Nursing Practice from Columbia University School of Nursing. Jane is a primary care provider at the Nurse Practitioner Group of ColumbiaDoctors Primary Care. As a doctorally-prepared adult-gerontology nurse practitioner, she cares primarily for adults while focusing on health promotion, disease prevention/management, wellness, and episodic (ex. bronchitis, pneumonia, conjunctivitis) care. Her clinical and research interests include women's health, family planning, endocrinology, anxiety, and depression.

Biography: Kimia Mirabbaszadeh (Preferred name Kimi Zadeh), DNP, FNP-BC, is a primary care nurse practitioner with a women's health subspecialty and she is an Assistant Professor of Nursing at Columbia University School of Nursing. She received her Bachelors of Science in Nursing (BSN) from University of Washington and her Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP) from Columbia University School of Nursing. Kimi is a primary care provider at the Nurse Practitioner Group of Columbia Doctors Primary Care. As a doctorally-prepared family nurse practitioner, she cares primarily for adults while focusing on health promotion, disease prevention, and managing chronic conditions. Her nursing experience is in emergency medicine whilst her training in the DNP program was focused primarily in family medicine, endocrinology, women's health, and hepatology. Her clinical and research interests include women's health, endocrinology, and hepatology.

Biography: Jonathan Casazola is a Internist at Oak Street Health specializing in care for adults on Medicare.