Guarionex Joel DeCastro, MD

Dr. Raza is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the MDS Center at Columbia University in New York, NY. She started her research in Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) in 1982 and moved to Rush University, Chicago, Illinois in 1992, where she was the Charles Arthur Weaver Professor in Oncology and Director, Division of Myeloid Diseases. The MDS Program, along with a Tissue Repository containing more than 50,000 samples from MDS and acute leukemia patients was successfully relocated to the University of Massachusetts in 2004 and to Columbia University in 2010. Before moving to New York, Dr. Raza was the Chief of Hematology Oncology and the Gladys Smith Martin Professor of Oncology at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester. She has published the results of her laboratory research and clinical trials in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Blood, Cancer, Cancer Research, the British Journal of Hematology, Leukemia, and Leukemia Research. Dr. Raza serves on numerous national and international panels as a reviewer, consultant, and advisor and is the recipient of a number of awards.

Andrew Eisenberger graduated from Columbia University with a BA in Philosophy in 1992 and received his MD from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 2001. Dr. Eisenberger did his residency in internal medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, where he served for a year as chief resident. He then completed his fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Eisenberger embraces his role as a medical educator: for medical students, physicians in training, colleagues and patients alike. The Columbia University Vagelos School of Physicians and Surgeons’ Hematology course has been under his leadership for more than a decade, and he recently became an associate program director of the University’s Hematology/Oncology post-doctoral fellowship program. Dr. Eisenberger was inducted into the Medical Center’s Academy of Clinic Excellence in 2018. His clinical practice currently focuses on the diagnosis and management of complex bleeding and clotting disorders, particularly in unique populations such as pregnant women and critically ill hospitalized patients. He also has extensive experience with difficult-to-manage blood disorders including antiphospholipid antibody syndrome (APLS), heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA), thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), hematologic complications of solid organ transplantation and myeloproliferative neoplasms.

Joanna L. Urli is an ABGC-certified genetic counselor practicing within the fields of Maternal Fetal Medicine and Gynecologic Oncology. She received her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from The University of Alabama and her Master of Science degree in Genetic Counseling from Boston University School of Medicine in 2019. Joanna has worked in both reproductive and oncology genetics throughout her career, and she enjoys being able to counsel patients in both of these fields. She has particular interest in increasing access to genetic testing and in exploring the overlap between reproductive and oncology genetics.