Dr. Spiro Pantazatos is an applied statistician with expertise in neuroimaging, psychiatry, bioinformatics and computational biology. As Research Scientist and Assistant Professor of Clinical Neurobiology at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Dr. Pantazatos has been a key contributor to research projects and major grant proposals in the departments of Psychiatry and Biomedical Engineering.
In 2021, Dr. Pantazatos pioneered research on COVID vaccine risk-benefit by age group using publicly available CDC data.
His findings were featured at a Columbia Medical Center symposium on COVID, garnered over 500,000 views, and resonated with the contemporaneous recognition by the CDC that the vaccine did not prevent transmission, and the move by European countries to ban Moderna for males under 30 because of safety concerns.
Based on these findings, Dr. Pantazatos urged Columbia’s leadership to lift mandates, particularly for low-risk students. These efforts, together with his science-based petition that garnered the signatures of nearly 1,000 Columbia affiliates, resulted in the successful block of the fall 2022 booster mandate.
Nevertheless, Dr. Pantazatos was dismissed from Columbia without further explanation, cruelly ending the scientific work he had been so invested in.
For his courage to remain true to scientific results and his dedication to protect the health of students and the public at large, the Columbia Academic Freedom Council is honored to present Dr. Spiro Pantazatos with the 2025 Academic Freedom Award.
