About

Debbie Schwartz is a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley, specializing in providing customized advice and investment strategies to high-net-worth individuals and families. She brings over 15 years of experience in investment banking and legal practice to her advisory work. Her investment banking career includes roles as a vice president at Merrill Lynch, a senior vice president at HSBC Securities (USA), and a director at Credit Suisse. In these roles, she advised executives of public companies, private-equity firms, and closely held businesses on mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance, with extensive experience working with private companies and their founders to raise capital and navigate strategic options. Prior to her career in investment banking, Debbie practiced corporate law as an attorney in New York City. She holds a B.A. in economics from Barnard College, a J.D. from NYU Law School, and an M.B.A. with honors in finance from Columbia Business School. During her time at Columbia Business School, she served as a microeconomics teaching assistant and was elected to the Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Internal medicine
• Surgery
• Urology
• General surgery

Selected publications

• Efficient Navigation in Unknown Indoor Environments with Vision-Language Models

  ArXiv.org · 2025-10-06

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We present a novel high-level planning framework that leverages vision-language models (VLMs) to improve autonomous navigation in unknown indoor environments with many dead ends. Traditional exploration methods often take inefficient routes due to limited global reasoning and reliance on local heuristics. In contrast, our approach enables a VLM to reason directly about occupancy maps in a zero-shot manner, selecting subgoals that are likely to yield more efficient paths. At each planning step, we convert a 3D occupancy grid into a partial 2D map of the environment, and generate candidate subgoals. Each subgoal is then evaluated and ranked against other candidates by the model. We integrate this planning scheme into DYNUS \cite{kondo2025dynus}, a state-of-the-art trajectory planner, and demonstrate improved navigation efficiency in simulation. The VLM infers structural patterns (e.g., rooms, corridors) from incomplete maps and balances the need to make progress toward a goal against the risk of entering unknown space. This reduces common greedy failures (e.g., detouring into small rooms) and achieves about 10\% shorter paths on average.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Refractory Toxic Shock-Like Syndrome from<i>Streptococcus dysgalactiae</i>ssp.<i>equisimilis</i>and Intravenous Immunoglobulin as Salvage Therapy: A Case Series

  Case Reports in Infectious Diseases · 2016-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Infections from Streptococcus dysgalactiae ssp. equisimilis (SDSE) can cause a wide variety of infections, ranging from mild cellulitis to invasive disease, such as endocarditis and streptococcal toxic shock-like syndrome (TSLS). Despite prompt and appropriate antibiotics, mortality rates associated with shock have remained exceedingly high, prompting the need for adjunctive therapy. IVIG has been proposed as a possible adjunct, given its ability to neutralize a wide variety of superantigens and modulate a dysregulated inflammatory response. We present the first reported cases of successful IVIG therapy for reversing shock in the treatment of SDSE TSLS.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Tolerability of Enteral Nutrition in Mechanically Ventilated Patients With Septic Shock Who Require Vasopressors

  Journal of Intensive Care Medicine · 2016-07-03 · 91 citations

  articleSenior author

  PURPOSE: Enteral nutrition (EN) is often held in patients receiving vasopressor support for septic shock. The rationale for this practice is to avoid mesenteric ischemia. The objective of this study is to evaluate the tolerability of EN in patients with septic shock who require vasopressor support and determine factors associated with tolerance of EN. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This was a single-center retrospective review of adult patients admitted to the intensive care unit with a diagnosis of septic shock and an order for EN. The primary outcome was EN tolerance. Secondary outcomes included time to initiation of EN from the start of vasopressor(s), length of stay, and mortality. RESULTS: A total of 120 patients were included. Sixty-two percent of patients tolerated EN. The most common reason for intolerance of EN was gastric residuals > 250 mL (74%). No reports of mesenteric ischemia were observed. A multivariate analysis demonstrated that patients with septic shock initiating EN within 48 hours and receiving norepinephrine-equivalent doses of 0.14 μg/kg/min or less were more likely to tolerate EN. CONCLUSION: Based on our observation, early EN may be tolerated and safely administered in patients with septic shock who are adequately fluid resuscitated and receive doses of < 0.14 μg/kg/min of norepinephrine equivalents.

  PublisherDOI

• False‐negative Interpretations of Cranial Computed Tomography in Aneurysmal Subarachnoid Hemorrhage

  Academic Emergency Medicine · 2016-02-26 · 15 citations

  articleOpen access

  OBJECTIVES: Prior studies examining the sensitivity of cranial computed tomography (CT) for the detection of subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) have used the final radiology report as the reference standard. However, optimal sensitivity may have been underestimated due to misinterpretation of reportedly normal cranial CTs. This study aims to estimate the incidence of missed CT evidence of SAH among a cohort of patients with aneurysmal SAH (aSAH). METHODS: We performed a retrospective chart review of emergency department (ED) encounters within an integrated health delivery system between January 2007 and June 2013 to identify patients diagnosed with aSAH. All initial noncontrast CTs from aSAH cases diagnosed by lumbar puncture (LP) and angiography following a reportedly normal noncontrast cranial CT (CT-negative aSAH) were then reviewed in a blinded, independent fashion by two board-certified neuroradiologists to assess for missed evidence of SAH. Reviewers rated the CT studies as having definite evidence of SAH, probable evidence of SAH, or no evidence of SAH. Control patients who underwent a negative evaluation for aSAH based on cranial CT and LP results were also included at random in the imaging review cohort. RESULTS: A total of 452 cases of aSAH were identified; 18 (4%) were cases of CT-negative aSAH. Of these, seven (39%) underwent cranial CT within 6 hours of headache onset, and two (11%) had their initial CTs formally interpreted by board-certified neuroradiologists. Blinded independent CT review revealed concordant agreement for either definite or probable evidence of SAH in nine of 18 (50%) cases overall and in five of the seven (71%) CTs performed within 6 hours of headache onset. Inter-rater agreement was 83% for definite SAH and 72% for either probable or definite SAH. CONCLUSIONS: CT evidence of SAH was frequently present but unrecognized according to the final radiology report in cases of presumed CT-negative aSAH. This finding may help explain some of the discordance between prior studies examining the sensitivity of cranial CT for SAH.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Trimethoprim-Sulfamethoxazole-Induced Subcutaneous Sweet's Syndrome Masquerading as Septic Shock

  CHEST Journal · 2016-10-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Residual Roots as an Anatomical Guide for Implant Placement: Case Series With Two-Year Follow-up

  Journal of Oral Implantology · 2015-09-21 · 3 citations

  article

  As placement of implants into immediate sites involves management of the remaining root structure, these residual roots may be used as a guide for the development of osteotomy. This aids in implant positioning and prevents drill slippage into the residual root spaces during osteotomy drilling. Following completion of the osteotomy, the remaining root structure is extracted prior to implant placement into the site. The aim of this study is to assess the success rate of implants when the residual roots were used as anatomical guides for osteotomy. One hundred implants were placed in 57 patients, and 4 different types of implants were used: 47 Bioner TOP DM implants, 20 Nobel Biocare Replace implants, 25 Biohorizons Tapered Internal implants (Birmingham, Ala), and 8 Alpha-Bio Tec SPI Implants. The implants were placed into 57 patients. Osteotomies were placed through intact residual roots, which acted as anatomical guides for implant surgical placement. Patients had a follow-up period of 2 years, and in that time none reported discomfort after implant placement. There were no signs of peri-implantitis observed in any of the patients. Of all the implants placed, the Bioner TOP DM implant showed the least amount of crestal bone loss. Placing implants through residual roots as an anatomical guide is a useful technique that shows good results over a 2-year follow-up period.

  PublisherDOI

• MDCT diagnosis of acute pulmonary embolism in the emergent setting

  Emergency Radiology · 2015-01-08 · 12 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Uncertainty With D-dimer Use and the ADJUST-PE Study

  Annals of Emergency Medicine · 2015-04-22 · 1 citations

  letter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• In reply

  Annals of Emergency Medicine · 2014-03-21

  letter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Precautions With PERC

  Annals of Emergency Medicine · 2013-07-19 · 1 citations

  letterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Adam J. Rosh

  8 shared

• John K. Lattimer

  5 shared

• Meyer Alpert

  5 shared

• Harold A. Garnes

  4 shared

• Gar Ming Chan

  Launceston General Hospital

  4 shared

• Jules Geltzeiler

  4 shared

• Kevin K. Tao

  MacNeal Hospital

  4 shared

• Theophilus W. Roberts

  Harlem Hospital Center

  4 shared