Jose U. Scher, MD, is the Steere Abramson Associate Professor of Medicine and director of NYU Langone’s Judith and Stewart Colton Center for Autoimmunity. He is also associate director of research and translational medicine in the Division of Rheumatology and director of the Psoriatic Arthritis Center.

He received his MD from Universidad Maimonides in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and completed his residency, fellowship, and postdoctoral training in clinical immunology and rheumatology at NYU Langone. Dr. Scher has focused his research on clarifying the role of the microbiome and host immunity in the pathogenesis and pharmacologic outcomes of psoriatic disease, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and other immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs). In particular, he has investigated the immune and environmental features that enhance risk for transition from psoriasis to psoriatic arthritis (PsA), the mechanisms behind inflammation in psoriatic and rheumatoid disease, and the pharmacomicrobiomics of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) and immunotherapies in RA and PsA. He has also assessed the effects of COVID-19 infection and vaccines on patients with IMIDs.

Rebecca Haberman, MD, MSCI, is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, associate director of the Psoriatic Arthritis Center, and assistant director of the Arthritis Clinic at NYU Langone Orthopedic Hospital. She received her MD from NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where she also completed her internal medicine residency and rheumatology fellowship and earned a master’s degree in clinical investigation. Her current research is focused on improving outcomes in patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) by understanding, profiling, and visualizing depression and pain present in the condition. Dr. Haberman also focuses on the prevention and early treatment of PsA as a pathway to improve outcomes. Her other research interests include using digital health applications and wearables to monitor PsA symptoms and early response to drug therapy, understanding differences in disease presentation and phenotype in racially and ethnically diverse patients, and identifying the impact of COVID-19 infection and vaccination of patients with immune-mediated inflammatory disease.

Read more about the multiple projects Dr. Haberman is leading in the lab.

Rebecca B. Blank, MD, PhD, is an instructor in the Department of Medicine whose research focuses on rheumatoid arthritis. She obtained a PhD in immunology at the University of California, San Francisco, performed postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health on the role of regulatory T cells in modulating gut inflammation, and received her MD from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. She completed her residency in internal medicine at Weill Cornell Hospital and rheumatology fellowship at NYU Langone. Her research focuses on the role of the gut microbiome in pathogenesis and amelioration of inflammatory arthritis, particularly rheumatoid arthritis (RA). She has two ongoing proof-of-concept trials investigating how the gut microbiome and its metabolic products, such as short chain fatty acids (SCFA), might induce a regulatory immune response in patients with RA. She also is interested in predictive biomarkers of treatment efficacy in RA.

Read more about the multiple projects Dr. Blank is leading in the lab.

Dr. Howe is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Medicine’s Division of Rheumatology. She received her MD from Tufts University School of Medicine and completed an internal medicine residency at Duke University Hospital. She joined the Scher Lab to investigate the role of familial aggregation on psoriatic disease, and to study the potential genetic and epigenetic underpinnings of psoriatic disease. Dr. Howe also recently joined the PAMPA study, which is a multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled trial designed to study the efficacy of guselkumab in preventing arthritis in patients with psoriasis. After her fellowship, she will continue this research at NYU Langone, along with pursuing a master’s degree in clinical investigation.

Fizaa Ahmed is the assistant director of clinical research operations in the Scher Lab. She attended the University of California, Davis, where she studied psychology and biology. Ahmed joined the Division of Rheumatology at NYU Langone with over 15 years of clinical research experience, previously overseeing and growing the Advanced Lung Disease Research Unit at the University of California, San Francisco, and managing studies in nuclear medicine and interventional radiology at Stanford University. She is passionate about travel, the scientific method, and being outdoors.