Anil K. Rustgi, MD

Anil K. Rustgi, MD, is the director of Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) and New York Presbyterian Hospital (CUIMC campus). He graduated from Yale College with a BS in molecular biophysics and biochemistry and earned an MD at Duke University SOM. He completed an internal medicine residency at Beth Israel Hospital and a gastroenterology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), both at Harvard Medical School. He rose to associate professor of medicine at MGH before joining the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in 1998, where he served as chief of gastroenterology until 2018.  During that tenure, he was the T. Grier Miller Professor of Medicine and Director of an NIH P30 Center in Digestive and Liver Diseases. In 2019, Dr. Rustgi was recruited to direct the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University and New York Presbyterian/Columbia campus and is the Herbert and Florence Irving Professor of Medicine.  Dr. Rustgi’s research focuses on tumor initiation, microenvironment, and metastasis in gastrointestinal cancers, including esophagus, stomach, pancreas, and colon cancers. His lab translates discoveries to improve molecular diagnostics and find new experimental therapeutics or patients. His funding is from the NIH/NCI and private foundations. He has more than 400 publications in journals such as Nature; Nature Genetics; Nature Medicine; Cancer Cell; Cancer Discovery, and New England Journal of Medicine, amongst others.  An AAAS fellow and an American Cancer Society Professor, Dr. Rustgi has been elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and the National Academy of Medicine. Previously, he was president of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) and was editor-in-chief of Gastroenterology. Dr. Rustgi is a past president of the American Pancreatic Association. He has received the AGA Friedenwald Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Gastroenterology l, AGA Distinguished Mentor Award, the Brufsky Award for Excellence in Research in Pancreatic Cancer, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the AAISCR. He also received multiple teaching and mentorship awards. Additionally, he maintains an active clinical practice.