Steven G. Kernie

Steven Kernie, M.D. is Vice President of Operations at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital at New York Presbyterian and Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He was formerly Chief Medical Officer for Women’s and Children’s services at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital where he provided medical oversight and programmatic alignment at NYP’s eight hospitals with obstetrical services and five with inpatient pediatrics. He now focuses on operational management at the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital while continuing to align and grow the women’s and children’s service lines across the NYP enterprise, which includes advancing quality and patient safety initiatives, regional outreach, and philanthropic engagement.

Dr. Kernie studied Human Biology at Stanford University and obtained his M.D. from the University of Washington in 1992. He was a pediatrics resident, chief resident, and pediatric critical care fellow at UT Southwestern/Children’s Medical Center in Dallas and joined the faculty there in 1999. While in Dallas, he established his laboratory on brain injury, served as the pediatric critical care fellowship program director, and was director of clinical research at Children’s Medical Center Dallas. Dr. Kernie was recruited to Columbia in 2011 to lead the division of pediatric critical care medicine and to become director of critical care services at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital. Until taking his current position in 2021, he was a Professor of Pediatrics (in Neurology) at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Vice-Chair for Clinical Affairs for the Department of Pediatrics and the division chief for Pediatric Critical Care and Hospital Medicine.

Dr. Kernie’s research career has focused on elucidating mechanisms of brain self-repair following injury. His lab developed a number of novel mouse transgenic animals that allow for specific ablation or activation of hippocampal neural stem cells, which are known to provide neurons to critical areas of the brain throughout life. The Kernie lab was the first to describe the phenomenon of injury-induced neurogenesis and subsequently experimentally demonstrated that this response is required for recovery from traumatic brain injury. These studies have been highlighted in Scientific American, US News and World Reports, and Science News for their impact on how we view and potentially treat devastating brain injuries in children and adults. Dr. Kernie has received continuous NIH funding for over 20 years and continues to maintain a basic science laboratory at Columbia University.

Updated August 5, 2024