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Scientific Board Members
Dr. Ernst J. Schaefer, M.D.
Dr. Schaefer received his B.A. cum laude (biology) from Harvard University, his B.M.S. from Dartmouth Medical School, and his M.D. with honors from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. He did his medical residency at Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York, and an endocrinology fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, where he also was a senior investigator and head of the clinical service of the Molecular Disease Branch of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Since 1982 he has been at Tufts University where he is currently a Distinguished University Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine and the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. He is a Senior Scientist and Director of the Lipid Metabolism Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, as well as the Director of the Cardiovascular Research Laboratory at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and is the Director of the Lipid and Heart Disease Prevention Program and Clinic.
Honors and Awards: Dr. Schaefer received the Mosby Award from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine (1972). While at the NIH, he received the J.D. Lane Award of the U.S. Public Health Service (1981). From the American Heart Association he received the Irvine H. Page Arteriosclerosis Research Award in 1981 for defining the metabolic defect in Tangier disease and describing two new genetic disorders apoA-I/C-III/A-IV and apoE deficiency characterized by severe lipoprotein abnormalities and premature heart disease. For his research, teaching, and clinical care at Tufts University and Tufts-New England Medical Center, Dr. Schaefer received the Saul Horowitz Research Award from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine (1989), Oliver Smith Awards of Tufts-New England Medical Center for Patient Care (1999, 2001, 2003), the E.V. McCollum Research Award of the American Society for Clinical Nutrition (2000), and a Distinguished Faculty Award from Tufts University (2001). Since 1997 he has been a member of Who’s Who in America, and in 2004 and 2007 was named among America’s Top Physicians by the Consumers Research Council of America. He received an honorable PhD in biochemistry and pharmacology from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina in 2007 for his research in lipoprotein metabolism.
Academic Achievement and Service: Dr. Schaefer is an author or co-author of over 450 publications and served on the first and second adult treatment panels of the National Cholesterol Education Program of the National Institutes of Health, on the Nutrition Study Section and as chairman of the Metabolism Study Section of the NIH, and the Nutrition Committee of the American Heart Association. He has served on numerous editorial boards, and since 1997 Dr. Schaefer has been the U.S. editor of the journal Atherosclerosis, the official journal of the European Atherosclerosis Society. He also currently serves on the Clinical Research Review Committee and Study Section of the NIH.
His research focuses on the nutritional and genetic regulation of plasma lipoproteins, and their relationship to coronary heart disease risk, and on the dietary and drug treatment of lipid disorders, as well as on optimal diets for the prevention of heart disease and dementia in the elderly. Areas of significant research at Tufts University in the past two decades have been characterization of plasma lipoprotein metabolism in the fasting and post-prandial state, definition of genetic lipoprotein disorders associated with premature heart disease, effects of different diets restricted in saturated fat and cholesterol on heart disease risk, the role of HDL subspecies in reverse cholesterol transport, the effects of dietary modification on weight loss and heart disease risk, genetic markers of heart disease, and the effects of nutition, statins, niacin, estrogens, and cholesterol transfer protein inhibitors on plasma lipoprotein metabolism.
Dr. Abraham B. Bornstein, MD., F.A.C.C.
Dr. Bornstein is a board-certified cardiologist who is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine in Pediatrics at the Weill Cornell Medical College, serving in the divisions of both Cardiovascular Pathophysiology, as well as Pediatric Cardiology in the area of adult congenital heart disease. He has more than 25 years of clinical practice experience in invasive and interventional cardiology, as well as critical care medicine. Dr. Bornstein is currently enrolled in the Graduate Biomedical Informatics Program at Columbia University. Along with recently attained experience in medical informatics (telemedicine), medical education, and medical research, he has helped establish ‘Hospitals Without Borders’, a new global telemedicine initiative, in partnership with New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Dr. Bornstein has collaborated with the Division of Pediatric Cardiology to establish an obesity council as well as an obesity research working group which includes physicians, nutritionists, and medical researchers from all the pediatric subspecialties as well as the Weill Cornell Medical College Clinical Research Center (GCRC), who currently meet on a monthly basis in order to help design and implement research protocols addressing childhood obesity, the metabolic syndrome, diabetes mellitus, as well as subclinical atherosclerotic vascular disease. In conjunction with The Rogosin Institute, the Division of Pediatric Cardiology, and Vascular Surgery, he has worked to help establish a vascular screening program to detect undiagnosed or subclinical vascular disease in overweight and or obese children, as well as children with the metabolic syndrome or DM. A comprehensive coronary risk factor assessment and profile will be developed for each child. Modalities utilized to evaluate the status of their vascular system will include flow mediated forearm vasodilation, carotid ultrasound to assess intima-medial thickness, CT angiography, and intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) as clinically indicated.
At Weill Cornell Medical College, He has been extensively involved at many levels of medical education, including medical student, pediatric housestaff, medical housestaff, and cardiology fellow training. He has also participated in provision of content for the PBL medical school curriculum, as well as content for CME and teleconferencing.
He has contributed extensively to the development of educational content for teaching programs including CME programs, resulting in the establishment of ‘International Medical Forum’, a not-for-profit educational subsidiary of ‘Hospitals Without Borders’. He has delivered numerous medical/scientific presentations at conferences, medical meetings and at conferences for hospital house staff. Additionally, he has lectured for a number of pharmaceutical companies as a member of their speakers’ bureau and medical educational panels.
Dr. Barbara Levine, R.D., Ph.D
Dr Levine has been a researcher, consultant and teacher of nutrition at some of the most prestigious medical institutions in the country.
After obtaining her doctoral degree at New York University, she served as the Director of the first NIH funded Nutrition Information Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Weill-Cornell Medical College, The Rockefeller University, Hospital for Special Surgery and Strang Cancer Prevention Center. Under the auspices of the Nutrition Information Center she also established and is the Director of the Calcium, Magnesium , Zinc and DHA Information Centers.
Dr. Levine later helped to establish the Human Nutrition Program at The Rockefeller University. She has practiced clinical nutrition for many years, translating current research as it applies to the prevention of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, cancer and osteoporosis. Her earlier work surveying attitudes and practices of primary care physicians on their dietary recommendations to patients has helped to develop strategies for enhancing the use of clinical nutrition in medical practice.
Currently, at Weil-Cornell Medical College, Dr. Levine’s academic position include: Associate Clinical Professor of Nutrition in Pediatrics; and Associate Scientist at the Hospital for Special Surgery. Her research focus centers on the nutritional interactions between genetics and the prevention of chronic diseases throughout the lifecycle, as well as the optimal diet for cognitive function and visual acuity.
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