Alumni Spotlight: D. Barry Boyd, MD, MS ’73

How did your experience at IHN shape your career? 

I was the first graduate student recruited to the new program at IHN by Myron Winick. My interview was in the fall of 1971, with Winick who was still at Cornell as Professor of pediatrics, I joined a small group of graduate students in the new program in the Fall of 1972.

I had the privilege of meeting Henry Sebrell, who originally conceived and planned the Institute after having been Director of the NIH. He had written a multi-volume text on vitamins and minerals and recalled helping to introduce the name "niacin" as a more approachable alternative to 'nicotinic acid.'

At IHN, I learned from outstanding nutrition faculty who were in the early or middle stages of their careers, including Xavier Pi-Sunyer, Sami Hashim, the late Theodore Van Itallie at the St. Luke’s Obesity Research Center, and DeWitt Goodman at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. I also became close with IHN faculty members Pedro Rosso and Joanne Brasel and worked alongside fellow students, including Jaime Rosivsky and Margot Cleary.

After IHN, I attended Cornell University Medical College, earning my MD in 1979. I then completed my internship, residency, chief residency, and fellowship training at New York Hospital, now NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

My years at Columbia profoundly influenced my professional life. After working in private practice as a hematologist-oncologist in Greenwich, Connecticut, I increasingly focused on cancer nutrition. In 2008, I was invited to develop and lead the nutrition curriculum at Yale School of Medicine. I continue to teach courses on micronutrients and cancer prevention, as well as obesity, energy balance, and cancer. My work focuses particularly on the relationship between insulin resistance and cancer risk and outcomes.

I published The Cancer Recovery Plan and have continued to bring attention to the important roles of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome in cancer. Since then, the field has grown considerably, with a much deeper understanding of the relevant mechanisms, epidemiology, and clinical management.

Like many of the IHN professors who taught me, I continue to work with curiosity and enthusiasm—and I have no intention of retiring.

Is there a memory that stands out from your time at IHN?

There are too many to recount, but a few include:

• Walking across Broadway to the small, two-story building that housed IHN in the early 1970s
• Taking the bus or subway between 168th Street and Columbia’s Morningside campus
• Living with two roommates at 90th Street and Broadway, across from a New York State senator and majority leader—an apartment no graduate student could afford today!
• Being just a short walk from Zabar’s

What skills or values are essential in your field? 

Curiosity is essential. Always ask “why,” not only “what” or “how.”

My undergraduate degree from Cornell was in evolutionary biology, and it continues to remind me to think in evolutionary terms. My undergraduate advisor was Malden Nesheim, a renowned nutritionist. When I was appointed director of the nutrition curriculum at Yale, I called him for advice and to reminisce. He recommended that I take a nutrition class—fitting advice given the direction my curiosity had already taken me.

In addition to remaining curious, it is important to stay open to new challenges. I have had many careers and look forward to whatever comes next.

What first brought you to the field of nutrition? 

My mother. She helped develop Wonder Bread, Hostess CupCakes, and Twinkies at the Continental Baking Company—yes, she was present at the beginning of what we now call “junk food.”

After graduating from Cornell, I was living in Greenwich Village and working at the Strand Bookstore. My mother knew one of the people helping to establish the Institute and suggested that I look into its new graduate program. The rest is history.

What developments are shaping your field today?

The scientific understanding of the relationship between insulin resistance and cancer—my primary area of interest—is growing rapidly. Continued advances in this area are helping us better understand the biological mechanisms involved and their implications for cancer risk, outcomes, and clinical care.