About

As Dean of the Katz School of Science and Health, it’s my pleasure to welcome you to our newly redesigned website and invite you to explore the programs, research and people that make our school one of the most competitive graduate schools in the country. 

As you browse the site, you’ll find that we are research scientists, tech builders and patient-centered clinicians working on problems that matter. We concentrate our energy on industry sectors that are the engines of New York City’s growth and revitalization and are redefining the way we work and live. 

Our faculty take an interdisciplinary approach to research and education, fostering the creativity, collaborative thinking and builder mindset required to take on today’s toughest problems. Courses are taught by exceptional researchers, clinicians and practitioners. You’ll learn by doing—working shoulder-to-shoulder with faculty to build technologies, conduct research, experiment in the lab and work with patients in the clinic. And you’ll graduate ready for great jobs and impactful careers. 

We are animated by an entrepreneurial spirit that makes us a locus of innovation. We recently launched a doctorate in occupational therapy and built a new home for it in the Bronx to demonstrate our core commitment to keeping the communities in which we serve healthy and resilient. We’ve developed a fully online speech-language pathology telehealth clinic and nearly a year into the pandemic, we continue to adapt our delivery systems to the altered rhythms and routines of people’s lives.?In the past year, our telehealth clinic has served over 1,000 clients in New York State. 

In addition, we began research on COVID-caused individual behaviors and are proposing to develop an open-source, public health database, conducted an analysis of the occurrence of COVID in the boroughs of New York City, and a recent alum is embarking on a pilot study on the use of pulse-oximetry for early detection of COVID in nursing homes. We’re exploring the feasibility of an intelligent soil monitoring system to help farmers deal with the effects of climate change. And we’ve conducted research on polar ice melting, created a hate-speech detection and indexing system, and modeled asteroid motion around Jupiter that has implications for future space probes. 

As important as our scholarly research and activities is our determination to lead with the universal values of kindness, integrity and generosity, and a commitment to making the world smarter, safer and healthier. Our goal is to create an inclusive environment so that everyone will emerge from our programs as a leader with compassion and cultural humility. 

Our?faculty, staff and student-run organizations are here to support you from the time you arrive in New York through graduation and beyond. They will?help you find your place in the city and will make sure that you feel connected, supported and safe. You will also have access to the university’s full range of student support services that promote health and wellness, public safety, cultural awareness and career advancement. 

I look forward to getting to know you. We’re a close-knit community at the Katz School and we’re committed to helping you fulfill your dreams and aspirations. 

Best wishes, 

Dr. Paul Russo 
Vice Provost and Dean, Katz School of Science and Health

Dr. Monique Katz graduated from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1963 and has been practicing medicine for over 50 years. She has also served on the Stern College for Women board of directors and received an honorary degree from in 1996. She and her husband, the late Mordecai Katz, have been honored as benefactors and have contributed in many different ways to the university, such as establishing a chair, a deanship, scholarships and fellowships, to name a few. In 2016, they donated $25 million to establish the Katz School, which offers master's programs in industries that are central to a modern economy: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cybersecurity, data analytics, digital marketing, occupational therapy, physician assistant studies and speech-language pathology, as well as mathematics and physics.

Mordecai Katz, , had a long affiliation with . He graduated from High School in 1948 and served on the boards of and Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies. He received an honorary doctorate from the university in 1993. In 1952, Katz earned his bachelor’s degree at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, today the engineering school of New York University. He went on to complete master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in industrial management from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. In addition, Yeshiva and Bar-Ilan universities each awarded him an honorary doctorate.

In addition to being generous donors to the university, he and his wife, Dr. Monique Katz, were active in UJA-Federation, Jewish National Fund, National Council of Synagogue Youth, Friends of Lubavitch, Bar-Ilan University and various organizations supporting Russian Jewry.