Julianne is amazing. Julianne is a tour de force. Julianne is a scientific polyglot. Julianne is
fearless. She's a role model as a woman scientist. She's a problem solver. She respects people. My
mom is amazing doctor and an even better mother. Julianne is a gem, you just don't find a lot of
Julianne's around. Weill Cornell Medicine is really lucky to have Dr. Imperato-McGinley.
She has a superb reputation in the area of Endocrinology let's go back to the early 1970s.
Julianne is a young doctor and she hears about a community in the Dominican Republic where children
are born appearing to be females and then later on develop male sexual characteristics. That was
exciting and new. What Julianne figured out was that the people that transitioned from female to
male at puberty were missing a particular enzyme that helps the body make active testosterone which
turned out to be able to produce a drug that would treat prostate enlargement and baldness so that is
really translational science. I really appreciate what she did because that kind of research is
absolutely vital for drug discovery. My mom is a legend among my friends because they all think she
invented Propecia and while she did the research that led to its development they don't seem to
care about the distinction and so they thank her every day for having full heads of hair.
After publishing this in Science in 1974 she continued her training and then her academic
career and made a number of other discoveries, headed the Clinical Research Center, and became
the first founding and continuing director of the Clinical and Translational Science Center.
The CTSC is a treasure for the institution. Weill Cornell is a leader in clinical research. What we
want to do is cure patients without the CTSC, without Julianne's leadership we wouldn't be
able to do that at the level that we can at Weill Cornell. She was really a raconteur in the various
sciences so she was a natural individual for Tony Gotto who was Dean of the medical school
at the time to encourage her to put in this 54 application and it has been totally a success
story since. Julianne has been spear heading it you know not only she got the first grant she
also got it renewed. She got that five-year grant renewed four times and each time it's worth about
50 million dollars. She is the top grant recipient in the history of the medical college. She has not
only been able to renew it but really create a community around it she has used this grant to
bring together institutions throughout the Upper East Side with a mission to improve community
health. Our CTSC really goes the entire gamut from pre-clinical all the way to community service
as credit to her understanding that good science and technology has to be bridged with making it
practical in the local context. She not only helped facilitate our interactions with her
center, but also had her own scientific ideas that she brought to the table to make the studies
even better. Dr. Imperato- McGinley has pioneered the opioid prevention, she's also been a pioneer
and bringing collaborators to address Covid-19 vaccines during the Covid crisis. Her team went
out to the various parts of our community and helped them with the testing that was needed.
When the pandemic hit, the division that she built was incredibly strong and unified because she
brought people together and gave them confidence and made the division feel like a community. She
is a great teacher in many ways on many levels it's not just about clinical acumen knowledge,
scientific analysis, it's more than that. It's very clear when you interact with her she wants
to help you. There's a generation of faculty who owe their success at Weill Cornell to her
personal involvement. I'm an admirer of Julianne I think she is a quintessential physician scientist.
We're just incredibly proud of her and she's accomplished so much through sheer determination
and hard work. Julianne's impact on Weill Cornell Medicine is unmeasurable she's an extraordinarily
intelligent highly trained physician and researcher but it's her heart that takes those
talents and delivers it to the people who need it the most and nothing's going to stop Julianne!