NJMS PEOPLE
DO YOU KNOW?
Marila Gennaro, MD
MARILA GENNARO
Spoken Like A True Italian Woman Scientist, wife, mother, she juggles life on two continents and her new TB test could revolutionize diagnosis of a 100-year-old scourge. By Mary Ann D’Urso
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P U L S E
WINTER 2009
“N
EVER say never,” laughs Marila Gennaro, MD, associate professor of medicine at NJMS. The echo of southern Italy textures her voice, at once rich and warm, but still a bit shy. “Twenty-four years ago, I was coming to America for a year.” Leaving behind her siblings, parents, extended family and country, Gennaro also left a tenured position at the Italian version of the National Institutes of Health in Rome. It would only be a year in New York, a small compromise to be with her husband, who was studying journalism at Columbia University. She would work with Richard Novick, the former director of the Public Health Research Institute (PHRI), which at the time was located in New York, studying microbiology and DNA replication. Today, Gennaro, 55, runs the laboratory bearing her name at PHRI, which became
PETE BYRON
