The Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine (HMSOM)’s fifth-annual Medical Student Research Day brought together fresh insights, hard work, and the burgeoning expertise of the institution’s medical students.
About 200 abstracts on a wide variety of the most current health topics, a renowned keynote speaker, platform presentations, and multiple poster sessions came together in a full-day event on the Nutley campus on May 1.
Welcome and introductions were made by Dean Jeffrey Boscamp, M.D., Vice Dean Stanley R. Terlecky, Ph.D. and Assistant Dean Zhiyong Han, Ph.D.
The keynote speaker was: John D. Aitchison, Ph.D., co-director of the Center for Global Infectious Disease Research at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and also professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington. The talk “Exploiting Viral Vulnerabilities for Next-Generation Antivirals” gave a peek into the future of landmark drug discovery - and how the microbiological tables might be turned against viruses in treatments of the future.
Two students gave featured and notable presentations as well: third-year student Nataline Elmasri presented a talk entitled, “Quantifying Cancer Dynamics using Genetic Barcoding and Experimental Evolution,” which came from her work within the Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI) laboratory of Alvin Makohon-Moore, Ph.D.; while fourth-year student Sidharth Anand spoke on “Evaluating Factors Contributing to Fatigue in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis,” from his work with Krupa Pandey, M.D.
Among the posters of note from the 12 sessions:
- “Predicting Clinical Outcomes Using Machine Learning” is an assessment of certain urological procedures, undertaken by student Jacob O’Hara, under the tutelage of Michael Stifelman, M.D.
- Several posters involved fourth-year student Ryan Paul, focusing on sports injuries and especially those from the mechanics of throwing a baseball. One was entitled “Chronic Adaptations of the Supraspinatus Tendon in Professional Baseball Pitchers” and was a collaboration with fellow student Benyamin Anton.
- Evaluating the quality of medical information on certain social media platforms was the focus of a project by Jonathan Krantz, with the mentorship of Shelley Saber, M.D.
- “Concept Mapping to Facilitate Community Health Project Development in Medical Education” was a project to determine better ways to make such projects HMSOM undertakes more easily realized. The research was conducted by fourth-year student Melika Behrooz, in collaboration with faculty member Lawrence Rosen, M.D.
- The difference in running shoes between the sexes was the focus of “Unequal Footing: A CiteSpace Analysis of Sex-specific Running Shoe Design,” a work by student Raj Bhatt, in conjunction with mentor Kevin Chen, M.D.
“The work is varied, and it is incisive,” said Vice Dean Terlecky. “Our students are here talking about original research, original scholarship, doing case reports, they’re doing systematic reviews, they’re doing translational research, they’re doing clinical research. It has blossomed to an extent I could not imagine previously.”