Among the many distinguished graduates of the Weill Cornell Medical College Class of 2019 was one new doctor with a very special connection to the Brain and Spine Center. Emilie George, MD, was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for her Scholarly Project within the Areas of Concentration (AOC) Program for work under the mentorship of Dr. Jeffrey Greenfield.
Dr. George came to work as a research assistant in Dr. Greenfield’s pediatric neuro-oncology lab in the summer of 2013, shortly after the lab had joined with Dr. Souweidane’s research and evolved into the Children’s Brain Tumor Project. The connection was personal for her – her high school friend Elizabeth Minter, a patient of Dr. Greenfield’s, had succumbed to a brain tumor in 2012. Before her death, Elizabeth and her family and friends had worked with Dr. Greenfield on founding Elizabeth’s Hope, a fund-raising campaign to support research into rare and inoperable pediatric brain tumors.
As a research assistant, Emilie was instrumental in implementing the first GC Registry, and was featured in a 2016 video about Elizabeth’s Hope:
Dr. George brought her passion for finding cures into her work in the lab and chose Pediatric Neuro-oncology as her Area of Concentration in medical school after being accepted into Weill Cornell in 2015.
The Areas of Concentration Program is a new and important part of the medical school curriculum, matching students with faculty mentors and guiding them to select a specific area on which to focus for an independent scholarly project. The results of that project are submitted in a final written report before the MD degree is conferred. Emilie's paper was "The Role of IGSF3 in Gliomatosis Cerebri."
“Students like Emilie make mentors look good,” says Dr. Greenfield. “From her earliest time in our lab it was clear to us all that she was an outstanding talent with so much promise as a physician. I was proud to be her mentor in the AOC program – the mentorship effort has been a resounding success, and the neurosurgery department is delighted to be a part of it.”
Dr. George now begins her residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. We congratulate her on obtaining her medical degree and for being recognized for excellence in the AOC program, and we wish her well in her medical career.
