Lisa Staiano-Coico to lead Tri-Institutional Research Program

Staiano-Coico

By Roger Segelken

A biomedical researcher and educator, Lisa Staiano-Coico, has been named executive director of the New York-based Tri-Institutional Research Program (TIRP).

Established in 2000 with a $160 million gift, TIRP encompasses New York City's Rockefeller University, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Medical College of Cornell, as well as Cornell's main campus in Ithaca. TIRP collaborative research is focused in three areas -- chemical biology, computational biology, and cancer and developmental biology -- with tri-institutional graduate training programs offered in chemical biology, computational biology and medicine.

A professor of microbiology in surgery and vice provost at Weill Cornell Medical College, Staiano-Coico also was appointed as vice provost for medical affairs at Cornell.

Announcing the TIRP appointment, Weill Cornell Medical College Dean Antonio M. Gotto Jr. said: "Professor Staiano-Coico has been instrumental in the tri-institutional collaboration right from the start, and she is the ideal leader to direct this strategic partnership as it begins to achieve its full potential. As a biomedical researcher and educator with a commendable record of administrative leadership, she knows well the unique strengths of each institution and how their resources can best be deployed."

Staiano-Coico observed: "The faculty-researchers who formed the program back in 2000 and the talented scientists we have recruited since then are flourishing in this collaborative environment, but it is the top-tier group of graduate students who are the 'glue' in the program. These next-generation biomedical scientists are showing us how to do it, how to cross the institutional and disciplinary boundaries, to marshal the resources they need to do great things."

Staiano-Coico earned her Ph.D. in microbiology (1981) at Cornell and a B.S. in biology with honors (1970) at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. After conducting postdoctoral research at Sloan-Kettering Institute (1981-83), she joined the Medical College faculty in 1983 and was promoted to professor in the fields of surgery and dermatology in 1996 and public health in 2002. One aim of her research into the role of normal human keratocytes (NHKs), she said, is to design better biological wound dressings that can enhance the healing of burn wounds.

As Cornell's vice provost for medical affairs, Staiano-Coico will maintain an administrative office in Ithaca, as well as her laboratory and office in New York City.