Medical Partnership
Oct 30, 2024
Medical Partnership hosts fourteenth annual Research Symposium
On Monday, October 28, students, faculty, staff, and guests gathered at the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education for the Augusta University/University of Georgia Medical Partnership’s Class of 2027 to present their research findings at the 14th annual Research Symposium.
The Medical Scholars Program (MSP) is an opportunity for students to expand their scholarly experiences and learn how medical knowledge is derived by participating in summer research across the world. They also learn how to frame a testable hypothesis, write a research proposal, carry out a project, evaluate scientific and medical data, and write up their results. It provides them with an opportunity to communicate their findings through presentations at local, regional, and sometimes national scientific meetings.
Their findings are then presented at the annual Research Symposium in the fall. The majority of participants are second-year medical students who completed research in the summer between their first and second years.
This year’s MSP saw 38 members of the class take part in the program.
“I’m always impressed by how much the students accomplish and learn in just 10 weeks,” said Dr. Leslie Lee, director of MSP. “I’m thrilled that once again we had so many students who took advantage of this opportunity.”
Dr. Yana Zavros, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar at UGA and the research center director for the School of Medicine, provided the keynote address for the event. Zavros presented her research from “Optimizing the Pancreatic Tumor Microenvironment to Effectively Treat Cancer Patients: Knowledge gained from a bench-to-bedside-to bench multidisciplinary research team approach”.
The event began with a poster session and concluded with oral presentations and the awards portion. Awards were given for the top three posters and elevator pitches.
Maya Akbik, Sean Mahjan, and Dan Zlatopolsky all took part in the oral presentation portion of the event. Kenny Ume was awarded first place for his poster Comparing Gait Measurements of Involved and Uninvolved Sides Preoperatively in Patients with Lower Extremity Pathology Using the Stridelink Wearable Gait Measuring Device, and Barquiesha Madison took first place in the elevator pitch competition.
The Class of 2027 MSP statistics:
Locations:
Twelve institutions across six states, including UGA, the Medical Partnership, Emory University, CHOA/Egleston, Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, UC Irvine, University of Colorado, and Vanderbilt University.
Specialties represented:
Specialties represented anesthesiology, psychology, oncology, cardiology, dermatology, ENT, kinesiology, internal medicine, family medicine, radiology, ophthalmology, orthopedics, pediatrics, and surgery.
Award Winners
Poster:
1. Kenny Ume
2. Brendan Jarvis
3. Megha Sequeira
Elevator Pitch:
1. Barquiesha Madison
2. Rachel Byun
3. Lauren Kim