Elaine Karis, MD

Elaine is a native New Yorker (our only one this year!). She began her undergraduate studies at Wagner College, where she earned a Presidential Scholarship and was appointed to the elite President’s list. She then moved on to Barnard College, where she majored in biopsychology and did her senior thesis on the role of nitric oxide and other signaling molecules on the behavior of the medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis). She subsequently went on to medical school at SUNY Buffalo and internal medicine residency at Beth Israel in New York. During residency, Elaine spent time doing research with Jill Buyon and Bob Clancy, looking at circulating endothelial cells as biomarkers for lupus vasculopathy. Elaine then spent several years as an internist before deciding to return to her first love, rheumatology. She has spent the past year doing laboratory research with Anne Davidson and Betty Diamond. Welcome home Elaine!