Thank You for Celebrating with your NYU School of Medicine Community.

Athena Kritharis, MD, graduated magna cum laude with honors in chemistry from New York University in 2005. Dr. Kritharis was a presidential honors scholar and recipient of a dean’s undergraduate research grant. After earning her medical degree from NYU School of Medicine in 2009, she completed her internal medicine residency training at Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine in 2012, where she served an additional year as chief resident. Dr. Kritharis completed her hematology-oncology fellowship at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts in 2016, where she was also selected as chief fellow. She subsequently joined the faculty of Massachusetts General Hospital in the division of benign hematology at Harvard Medical School. While there, she was the primary hematologist overseeing patients with Osler-Weber-Rendu syndrome and other hematologic disorders. She recently joined the division of blood disorders at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey.

Dr. Kritharis is board certified in internal medicine, hematology, and medical oncology. She has been active in the design and execution of quality improvement projects, and has conducted cancer clinical trials. She has published more than 15 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters in the field of hematology, and has received recognition from the American Society of Hematology, and as an ECOG National Cancer Institute Cooperative Group Young Investigator. She is passionate about delivering excellent cancer care to a diverse patient base.

Ofer Levy, MD, PhD, was born to and raised by the artist Benjamin Levy and music composer Hanna Levy in New York City, where he graduated from the Bronx High School of Science. After graduating from Yale College with a BS in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Dr. Levy entered the Medical Scientist (MD/PhD) Training Program at NYU School of Medicine. There, he earned his PhD in Microbiology under the mentorship of Peter Elsbach, MD, PhD, and Jerrold Weiss, PhD, characterizing neutrophil-derived antimicrobial proteins and peptides. Inspired by his wife, Sharon Levy, MD, MPH—also a graduate of NYU School of Medicine, class of 1992—Dr. (Ofer) Levy chose Pediatrics, and completed both residency and fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Boston Children’s Hospital. He is currently Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School as well as principal investigator, staff physician, and the Director of the Precisions Vaccine Program in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Boston Children’s Hospital.

His laboratory studies vaccine-induced human immune responses in vitro and in vivo, using a variety of platforms. His work holds special promise for populations with distinct immune responses, including those at the extremes of age, who suffer the most infections. He currently leads two major research projects funded by the NIH/NIAID: an Adjuvant Discovery Program contract, leveraging robotic and immunologic approaches to discover, characterize, and formulate novel small molecule adjuvants that may enhance vaccine responses of the very young and the elderly; and a Human Immunology Project Consortium effort to employ systems biology to define biomarkers of human neonatal vaccine immunogenicity. These projects are providing fresh insight and innovation to vaccines directed at influenza, hepatitis B and respiratory syncytial virus. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with Sharon and the couple’s three children, Orly, Isaiah, and Emanuel.