On October 26th, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion hosted its first Research Faculty Dinner. The dinner format is designed to provide an informal, collegial setting for those in research careers to meet each other and build community while learning about each other’s research. The Thursday night event featured a presentation by Dr. Erica Phillips-Caesar, WCM Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine from the Division of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Phillips shared her research on the trending obesity epidemic across low-income ethnic minority populations in New York City. Her research explores the relationship between stress and the ability to lose weight as well as intra- and interpersonal eating environments that affect weight loss or gain and negative or positive changes in eating habits. The evening included an exercise utilizing the “Convoy Model” which encouraged attendees to explore their social relationships in order to evaluate whether their total number of relationships made them more or less prone to lose weight. The evening ended with an engaging discussion and networking amongst Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering research scientist.