Commission on the Status of Women

Susan Witte is a social worker and Professor at the School of Social Work, where she teaches courses in the clinical and advanced generalist methods of the master’s program, as well as in the doctoral program. In 2019, Dr. Witte was selected as a member of the inaugural cohort of the Provost’s Senior Faculty Teaching Scholars in recognition of her outstanding achievements in both teaching and research. Dr. Witte’s research and teaching involve prevention and treating HIV/AIDS, other STIs, intimate and gender-based violence, alcohol and drug use, and related social determinants of health and mental health.

Paola Valenti is an economist with expertise in development economics, applied econometrics, applied microeconomics, and economics of antitrust and intellectual property. Dr. Valenti's has expertise in industries such as pharmaceuticals, medical devices, industrial chemicals, consumer products, food, and computer hardware and software.

Dr. Valenti previously served as a consultant at NERA Economic Consulting, developing economic research and quantitative analysis. She has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank's Human Development Network and Social Protection Group, conducting research on poverty among the elderly in Bulgaria, Mauritius, Nepal, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru and Tajikistan.

Dr. Valenti holds laurea and Dottorato di Ricerca degrees in economics from the University of Rome La Sapienza, an M.Sc. degree from CORIPE Piemonte, and a Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Monica Goldklang, M.D., is Assistant Professor of Medicine (in Anesthesiology) in the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Goldklang’s main area of research interest is in translational studies investigating the pathogenesis of smoking related lung disease. Her work involves understanding the mechanisms of protease upregulation in lung injury. She is currently working on a project investigating factors that alter MMP-13 expression and activity in lung disease. Moving forward, Dr. Goldklang has received NIH K08 funding to investigate the role of ion channels in smoking related lung disease. 

Sen. Mahlon Mathieson, MS ’25, is a Doctor of Nursing Practice student in the Midwifery Program at Columbia University School of Nursing and serves as the School’s representative to the Columbia University Senate. Entering her second term, she remains committed to shared governance, student advocacy, and ensuring that diverse perspectives are represented in university decision making.

Beyond her role in the Senate, Mahlon serves on the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Graduate Nursing Student Academy Leadership Council, where she contributes to initiatives that support graduate nursing students across the country. She is also a teaching assistant and SAFE nurse, combining her passion for education, mentorship, and patient advocacy to support both students and survivors.

Mahlon's academic and research interests focus on maternal health equity, reproductive health, and trauma informed care. Her scholarship explores barriers to support and access for childbearing families, with particular interests in interpersonal violence screening, lactation support, and public health initiatives that improve maternal outcomes. Through her research and clinical work, she seeks to advance evidence based, person centered care that promotes safety, dignity, and health equity.

As a student leader, Mahlon is dedicated to fostering collaboration across schools and disciplines while advocating for policies and initiatives that strengthen the student experience. She approaches leadership with empathy, integrity, and a commitment to service, striving to create an environment where all members of the Columbia community feel heard, valued, and empowered to contribute.
 

Kate Immergluck is a second-year medical student at VP&S. Before medical school, she completed a degree in Public Policy Analysis and Biology at Pomona College and worked at an education and sports-based youth development program. She is currently working on developing a Trauma Informed Care curriculum for the medical school and is invested in cultivating a trauma informed learning environment for students across Columbia’s schools and campuses.

Sen. Kara Lamb is an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia University, a senior researcher in the Learning the Earth with Artificial Intelligence and Physics (LEAP) Center, and an Affiliate of the Data Science Institute. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Climate School and collaborates with researchers at NASA GISS on the NASA Digital Twins for Climate Science project. She serves on the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on AI Applications to Environmental Science and is a member of the U.S. CLIVAR Process Study and Model Improvement Panel. 

Dr. Lamb received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining Columbia, she spent four years as a research scientist at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, where she contributed to several major international airborne field campaigns, including the NASA KORUS-AQ and AToM missions and the NOAA FIREX FireLab study. Dr. Lamb’s research lies at the intersection of atmospheric observations, high-resolution modeling, and scientific machine learning. Her work focuses on improving understanding of aerosol and cloud processes, and developing interpretable, physics-informed machine learning approaches to advance next-generation Earth System Models.

Sen. Jeanine D’Armiento, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Medicine in Anesthesiology, Director of the Center for Molecular Pulmonary Disease in Anesthesiology and Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, and Director of the Center for Lymphangiomyomatosis (LAM) and Rare Lung Disease. On the University Senate, Dr. D’Armiento chairs the Executive Committee and serves on a number of other committees. In 2008, Dr. D’Armiento completed a two-year appointment as Associate Dean for Gender Equity and Faculty Development, where she concentrated on professional development programs for women faculty. Dr. D’Armiento served as Executive Director of the Summer Program for Under-Represented Students at CUIMC for close to two decades. She serves on the Executive Board of the Alpha-1 Foundation, which she has chaired. Dr. D’Armiento also serves as a consultant to the Director of the Office of Rare Disease at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. 

Sen. Janie Weiss is IT Manager of the Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, a role she has held for over 30 years. She assists faculty, staff, and students with their IT needs, helping to advance the research enterprise. On the University Senate, Janie serves on the Rules Committee, Structure and Operations Committee, Commission on the Status of Women, and Commission on Benefits.

Sen. Chunhua Weng is a Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University. Before arriving at Columbia, she completed a Ph.D. in Biomedical and Health Informatics from the University of Washington at Seattle.

The Weng Lab is focused on clinical research informatics. Her lab develops novel methods to improve the efficiency and generalizability of clinical trials research, to facilitate human phenotyping using electronic health records data, and to automate clinical evidence computing. They invent data-driven methods to optimize the inclusiveness and safety of clinical trial eligibility criteria for COVID-19 clinical trials. They discover knowledge of common clinical trial eligibility criteria from all the studies in ClinicalTrials.gov. They discover clinical trial recruitment success factors. They develop user-friendly software tools to help clinical trialists identify eligible study cohorts in the EHR data and help patients search for clinical trial studies with minimized information overload. They advance human phenotyping using clinical text combined with the Human Phenotype Ontology. They develop neuro-symbolic methods to automate medical evidence comprehension (making PubMed computable). They collaborate closely with clinical investigators, biostatisticians, rare disease experts, and translational researchers at CUIMC and beyond.

The National Library of Medicine, the Human Genome Research Institute, FDA, and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute have supported Dr. Weng’s research. Also, Dr. Weng has received several signature awards from Columbia University, including an Irving Fellowship (2007–2010), a two-phase Collaborative and Multidisciplinary Pilot Research Award (CaMPR) (2008–2010), a Columbia University Diversity Research Fellowship (2009), a Florence Irving Professorship (2010–2013), and a multidisciplinary collaborative award (2021-2022). Dr. Weng was a finalist in the 2010 Microsoft Faculty Fellowship Award. Dr. Weng is currently an Associate Editor for Journal of Biomedical Informatics.

Athena Tsu is a second-year medical student at VP&S. Before medical school, she studied Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University, where she also served as Gender and Sexuality Representative on Engineering Student Council and worked at an education nonprofit. She currently mentors and teaches students at VP&S and across CUMC through Columbia’s Interprofessional Education curriculum, Student Success Network, and House Mentorship Program; she is committed to building welcoming, inclusive communities and supporting students across Columbia’s schools.

Sen. Amy Zhou is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Barnard College. Professor Zhou received her BA and PhD in Sociology from UCLA as well as postdoctoral training at the UCSD Institute for Practical Ethics. Her research and teaching interests include healthcare, inequality, race/ethnicity, development, and science and technology studies. Professor Zhou's research has examined health inequalities in both the US and global setting. One line of research explores the impact of global health policies. Her current book project examines how global health efforts to address the HIV epidemic reconfigures local healthcare institutions and has unintended consequences for policymaking, healthcare practices, and the lives of providers and patients in Malawi. Another line of research looks at racial health inequalities in the US, focusing on the meaning of race in delivering racially targeted health services. Recently, she has started a new project that examines the social and ethical implications of gene drive technologies.