Katrina Armstrong

Katrina Alison Armstrong, MD is an American internist. She is the chief executive officer of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Armstrong is the first woman to lead Columbia's medical school and medical center. Previously, she was the first woman to hold the position of Physician-in-Chief at Massachusetts General Hospital and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2013 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020. Early life and education Armstrong grew up in Alabama and attended Indian Springs School. Upon graduating, she attended Yale University for her Bachelor of Architecture degree, Johns Hopkins University for her medical degree, and the University of Pennsylvania for her Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology degree. She completed her residency training in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins. Career University of Pennsylvania Armstrong joined the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in 1996 as a Physician-Scientist Fellow before accepting a professorship position in 1998 following her master's degree. At the turn of the century, she received a UPenn University Research Foundation Award to fund her projects Identifying and Reaching Populations at Risk: The Paradox of Cancer Control and Housestaff Depression and Career Choices. As an assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology in the Division of General Internal Medicine at UPenn, Armstrong co-developed and directed the first and second-year medical course "Clinical Decision Making." In recognition of her teaching, she received the 2003 Leonard Berwick Award, awarded to "a member of the medical faculty who in his or her teaching most effectively fuses basic science and clinical medicine."