NYMC Honors 61 Inductees at 70th Alpha Omega Alpha Ceremony

The evening began with the AOA Visiting Professor’s Lecture by Rebecca Martin, M.D. ’08, associate professor of medicine and of family and community medicine at NYMC and a palliative care specialist at Westchester Medical Center, who spent two years working as a physician in Tansen, Nepal, a rural village in the midwestern Annapurna Himalayas, an experience she described as “among the most formative of her life” and the subject of her memoir Though the Darkness: Medicine, Missions, and Meeting God in Nepal.

“In each of these chapters of my own career, the calling to compassionate, trustworthy care has been a consistent thread, even as the roles themselves have looked very different,” said Dr. Martin. “Now, as a palliative care physician, I live out this calling in a somewhat different manner from that in Nepal. Yet in many ways, the calling is the same, and it is yours as well. For no matter where you go, and through whatever field you pursue, as a physician you are in some sense called to serve the suffering.”

After reflecting on how health care in Nepal has evolved, she invited the audience into the experience—sharing clinical images from cases she encountered at Tansen Hospital to engage their diagnostic thinking. “I saw a more varied panoply of tropical and advanced disease presentations in those two years than I have in my entire career, before or since,” she said.

She then went on to offer a few bigger picture global health lessons: the importance of being flexible; the value of perseverance; the need to be resourceful; and how crucial it is to be culturally aware, as well as broader insights into medical practice and training gleaned during her time abroad and in the years since: be humble; the importance of listening; the value of resilience; and the gift of limitations.

“You are part of vital communities now, and you are being inducted into one such community today. You have each been deemed, in the eyes of your faculty attendings, ‘worthy to serve the suffering,’” she said. “You are here because, even among the best and brightest students selected to pursue a career in medicine, you have distinguished yourselves through academic excellence, while also embodying the ideals of professionalism, leadership, compassion, and service.” We are reminded, too, that in whatever we do, we are often just a part of the much bigger story of our patients’ lives, unfolding for a much longer time than that of our own involvement. Sometimes our role will be simply to stand in the gap and bear witness.”

Following the lecture, the AOA inductees and their guests moved into the Skyline Dining Room for the Induction Ceremony. 

“This is one of my favorite events because it represents something very important,” remarked Neil Schluger, M.D., dean of the School of Medicine. “It’s my strongly held belief that as physicians, we have an ethical imperative, a moral obligation to be excellent. Those of you who are about to be inducted into AOA represent the achievement of that standard in the most concrete way possible. You have excelled in your studies, and that should stand as a model for everyone in medicine. That has to be the goal for all of us, every single day, as we practice. It's not that having achieved AOA as a medical student that you can say, ‘okay, I'm done learning what I need to learn’. There’s always more to learn. So, I salute you, and I congratulate you on this achievement. I hope you'll carry the education you received at NYMC with you and continue to set an example of excellence in your training programs and beyond.”

“As a final admonition to all the AOA students and the new members, you will be the leaders of your medical and scientific communities and will have the continued responsibility of being the examples of excellence for your colleagues and patients. Election to AOA is a wonderful honor.  May God bless you, as you continue on in your medical careers and on your life voyages,” said William Frishman, M.D., professor and emeritus chair of medicine and councilor for the NYMC Iota Chapter of AOA.  

2025-2026 New York Iota Chapter Officers
Ryan Cosgro, President
Eliana Felder, Vice President
Madison Drogy, Academic Coordinator
Chase Goldberg, Volunteer Coordinator

Class of 2026 Senior AOA Inductees
Jeremy Appelbaum
Annesah Akbar
Luiza Azevedo Karrer (Class 2027)
Brandon Bessen (Class 2027)
Peter Chebi (Class 2027)
Eric Cunningham (Class 2027)
James Dweck
Lars Eckenberg
Nimrod Gozum (Class 2027)
Ellen Huhulea
Carolyn Khoury (Class 2027)
Victor Koltenyuk
Anoosh Kouyoumdjian
Austin Li
Donald Macelroy
Matthew Merckling
Alexander Monteith
Anne Nguyen
Sophie Ohrn
Marissa Petchpradub
Anne Pinchoff
Carolyn Robb
Victoria Robshaw
Bram Roth
David Schipper
Lindsey Schneider
John Sfakis
Gregory Spaulding
Corinne Stonebraker (Class 2027)
Rebecca Strafella
Shoaib Syed (Class 2027)
Ricardo Tochimani
Daniel Ufearo
Zachary Vazquez
Matthew Veale
Jessica Weiss
Harris Whiteson
James Williams
Robert Wolf
Patricia Xu

Class of 2027 Junior AOA Inductees
Raey Gesese
Thomas Hefele
Eugenia Kronenberg
Tara Nichols
Akima Sasaki
Jared Sasaki
Avi Stern
Lauren Tetelbaum
Amaara Wahid
Madison Weckerly

2026 AOA Resident Teaching Award
Mekedes Lemma, M.D., Department of Surgery
Sammy Dahan, M.D., Department of Surgery
Andrew Flatley, M.D., Department of Psychiatry
Maxwell Charlat, M.D., Department of Medicine
Subrat Das, M.D., Division of Cardiology

NYMC Alumni AOA Inductees
William Assante, M.D. ’19
Walter Lewis, M.D. ’91
Paul Ostrovsky, M.D. ’78

NYMC Faculty AOA Inductees
Eric Wold, M.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine
Akira Shishido, M.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine
Mark Hurwitz, M.D., Professor of Radiation Medicine

2026 AOA Volunteer Clinical Faculty Award
Cory Ruddy-Ramirez, D.O., Department of Family and Community Medicine