Dr Byron Thomashow is a Professor of Medicine Columbia University Medical Center and an Attending Physician at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He helped found the COPD Foundation in 2004 and served as Chairman of the Board of Directors for ten years. As of July 2018 he took on the role of Chief Medical Officer of the Foundation. He is the medical co-director of the Jo-Ann LeBuhn Center for Chest Disease on the Columbia campus and is medical director of the NewYork-Presbyterian Lung Volume Reduction program. He chaired the Respiratory Disease Council of the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare Network for many years, and co-chaired the NewYork-Presbyterian smoking cessation initiative leading to campus going smoke free. He has served as co-chair for the NY State COPD Coalition, cochaired the New York State COPD Summit in 2010, co-chaired COPD7 USA 2011, COPD8USA 2013, COPD 9USA 2015, COPD10 USA 2017, and co-chaired the COPDFoundation COPD Readmission Summits in October 2013 and March 2015. The Byron M Thomashow Professorship of Medicine Columbia University was established in 2006. He was awarded the 2013 American Thoracic Society Public Advisory Roundtable Excellence Award. In 2016 he received the Columbia University 2016 Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award sponsored by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation. In 2017 he received the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018 he received the JWWalsh Visionary Award from the COPD Foundation. He was a member of the steering committee and the co-primary investigator at the Columbia site for the National Emphysema Treatment Trial and has been and remains actively involved in multiple national clinical research projects.