Student Achievements
Students Chosen for ΑΩΑ Medical Student Service Award
Marissa DeFreitas, MS4
Christina Jarosch, MS4
Jeffrey Eisen, MS4
Yiuka Leung, MS1
Faraz Ahmad, MS4
The Pritzker Community Service Fellowship (PCSF) and Asian Pacific Medical Student Association (APAMSA) have both received funding from the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. PCSF, which is led by MS4s Faraz Ahmad, Marissa DeFreitas, Christina Jarosch, and Jeffrey Eisen, received renewed support for its efforts to create continuity and opportunity for all those interested in community service. APAMSA will use the funds to educate the Chicagoland Asian community about the Hepatitis B disease and how it can be prevented. The project is led by Yiuka Leung, MS1.
Three MS1s Receive University Human Rights Internships
Jessica Beaman
Colleen Denny
Geoff Stetson
First-year students Jessica Beaman, Colleen Denny, and Geoff Stetson have all received Human Rights Internships from the University of Chicago to fund their summer service projects later this year. Geoff will be working with Drs. Sarah-Anne Schumann, Vineet Arora, and Kristine Bordenave on the Pritzker Summer Service Partnership, specifically working with the New Millennium School of Health to develop a sustainable partnership with the community based on service and community development.
Colleen hopes to use this internship opportunity to learn about and work on the provision of women’s health care, particularly reproductive health care, in resource-poor areas of the world. She is currently looking into possible collaborations in South America or western Africa.
Jessica will either be returning to Costa Rica to work on human rights law and policy with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and Government of Costa Rica or will be working in Havana, Cuba on issues including food sovereignty and systems of care.
Second-year Students to Have a Big Presence at the American Geriatrics Society Meeting
Melissa Fish, MS2
Megan Prochaska, MS2
Julia Berian, MS2
Jeremy Wortman, MS2
Melissa Fish received the 2009 Student Clinical Research Award at the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) for most outstanding research contribution by a student. She will present her research titled “Higher Quality of Care for Hospitalized Older Adults is Associated with Improved Survival One Year After Discharge” as an oral presentation at both the AGS Meeting later this spring and the Society of Hospital Medicine Meeting. Her work emanated from the research Melissa conducted with Vineet Arora, MD during the Summer Research Program.
Megan Prochaska will present her research “Association Between PCP Communication for Hospitalized Older Patients and Reported Complications after Discharge” as an oral presentation at the AGS Meeting. She will also give a poster presentation at the Society of Hospital Medicine Meeting. Megan investigated this topic during the Summer Research Program and was mentored by Drs. Jeanne Farnan and Vineet Arora.
Jeremy Wortman will present his poster on “Comparing the Effectiveness of Telephone and Palmtop Computer Based Experience Sampling Methods in Hospitalized General Medicine Patients,” while Julia Berian has a poster that will be included in the Presidential Poster Session portion of the meeting. Jeremy conducted his research on this topic with David Meltzer, MD, PhD during the 2008 Summer Research Program. Julia’s research, titled “Salivary Testosterone is Independently Associated with Gait Speed in a Nationally-Representative Sample: Data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP),” was conducted with her mentor, William Dale, MD, PhD.
Pritzker Representation at the AMWA Regional Conference
Jina Youn, MS2
Regina-Celeste Ahmad, MS4
Tashera Perry, MS2
Numerous women from the Pritzker School of Medicine attended and presented posters at the American Medical Women’s Association Regional Conference held at UIC this past January. The conference, titled “The Gaping Hole in the Closing Gap: Women in Academic Medicine,” was co-organized by Tashera Perry, MS2. Dean Holly J. Humphrey, MD gave the keynote address.
Regina-Celeste Ahmad, MS4 and Jina Youn, MS2 both received awards for Best Poster Presentation at the conference. Regina-Celeste’s poster, entitled “The Ubiquitin-Modifying Enzyme A20 Regulates TCR Signaling and T Cell Function” emanated from her from PhD thesis research. Jina’s work stemmed from her master’s research and was titled, “Temporally Limited Role of Subtantia Nigra-Central Amygdala Connections in Surprise-Induced Enhancement of Learning.”
Sara Foley and Rebecca Levine, MS1s
The Pritzker Mammography Access Partnership (PMAP) submitted an abstract to the UIC Minority Health Disparities Conference, held on February 27th, and Sara Foley, MS1 presented this abstract during one of three concurrent sessions entitled, “Addressing Women’s Health.” The presentation, “Mammography Access and Awareness of Mammogram Availability in the Southside Chicago Community,” stems from work done in the Health Care Disparities in America initiative that all first year students experience. Contributing to the project were MS1s Kevin Chang, Laura Dilly, Sarah Horvath, Kyle Karches, Rebecca Levine, Jeanie Paik, Ajay Sampat, Geoffrey Stetson, Ming Zhong, Jamal Benhamida, and Zainab Mohiuddin. Faculty Lisa Vinci, MD, Janice Phillips, PhD, and Monica Vela, MD are also listed as authors.
Ravi Bamba, MS3
Third-year student Ravi Bamba was the first author on a paper recently accepted for publication in The Laryngoscope. His article, “The Minor Salivary Gland Biopsy as a Diagnostic Tool for Sjogren’s Syndrome” is a retrospective review of lip biopsies performed at the University of Chicago for Sjogren’s Syndrome. This project was part of the 2007 Summer Research Program, which he completed with Elizabeth Blair, MD.
Annie Dude, PhD, MS3
Annie Dude, PhD, MS3, recently published a paper in the January 2009 edition of the International Journal of STD and AIDS entitled “General Hygiene, Sexual Risk Behavior, and HIV Prevalence in Truck Drivers from Andhra Pradesh, South India: Implications for Prevention Interventions.” This research, which was also presented at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting in October 2008, emanated from her research with Dr. John Schneider during the Summer Research Program in 2007. Annie also wrote on spousal intimate partner violence in Rwandan women that has been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of the journal AIDS and Behavior.
Celine Goetz, MS2
MS2 Celine Goetz has been selected to a two-year term as the regional representative to the American College of Physicians (ACP) Council of Medical Students. Celine was also invited to be a part of the ACP Ethics, Professionalism, and Human Rights Committee.
Shashank Sinha, Jim Woodruff, MD, Vineet Arora, MD, Erin Cobain, and Jami Rothe
The Internal Medicine Interest Group was highlighted as the IMIG of the Month on the American College of Physicians website. Erin Cobain, Shashank Sinha, and Jami Rothe, all MS4s lead this group as Co-Directors. To read more about the groups endeavors for the 2008–09 academic year, visit the ACP website.
Ross Kessler, MS4
Ross Kessler, MS4, was awarded the recipient of the Mid-America Orthopaedic Association Physician in Training Award for his research on “Potential Use of Sox9 Transduced Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Articular Cartilage Repair.” He will present his work in a plenary session at the Association’s Annual Meeting later this spring. Ross’s research emanated from his Summer Research Program work with Drs. Sherwin Ho and T.C. He from the Section of Orthopaedic Surgery.
Elaine Lin, MS3
Elaine Lin, MS3 has been listed as first author of a publication in the American Journal of Chinese Medicine entitled “Antioxidant Protection by American Ginseng in Pancreatic B-cells.” Her mentor for this project was Dr. Chun-Su Yuan, and her research emanates from work conducted as an undergraduate at University of Chicago Tang Center for Herbal Medicine Research.
Sean Pitroda, MS2
Second-year student Sean Pitroda has been working with Dr. Ralph Weichselbaum, Chair of the Department of Radiation and Cellular Oncology, throughout the past year on a cancer research project. They have discovered that targeting MUC1 transmembrane glycoprotein could be an effective strategy to block tamoxifen resistance in breast cancers. Sean is the first author of a paper that will be highlighted in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, entitled “MUC1-Induced Alterations In a Lipid Metabolic Gene Network Predict Response of Human Breast Cancers to Tamoxifen Treatment.”
Ann DeBord Smith, MS4
Ann DeBord Smith, MS4 authored an article that appeared in the March 2009 edition of the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology. The paper, “Distal Esophageal Foreign Bodies: Is it a Common Occurrence Post-Fundoplication Requiring Immediate Intervention?” was undertaken to determine the occurrence of asymptomatic distal esophageal foreign bodies (DEFB) in children with post-fundoplication. Dana Suskind, MD was Ann’s mentor on this project.
Ann also plans to give an oral presentation at the American Transplant Congress in Boston, which will be held in June. The presentation, “The Markov Decision Process Can Help Maximize Benefits in Paired Kidney Donation,” stems from the ongoing research Ann has been conducting over the last year with Drs. Guiliano Testa & Robert Harland. She received the ΑΩΑ Carolyn L. Kuckein Student Research Fellowship for 2008-2009 to conduct this research, and was awarded the 2008 Roche Presidential Student Mentor Award from the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.
Jami Rothe, MS4
Jami Rothe, MS4 received a Joseph E. Johnson Leadership Day Grant—one of just 8 grants that are awarded nationally to medical students—to attend the American College of Physicians (ACP) Leadership Day in May. She also organized the first annual Chicago Internal Medicine Student and Resident ACP Social in partnership with Imerman Angels, a one-on-one cancer support network.
Geoff Stetson, MS1
Geoff Stetson, MS1 served as co-author for a paper published in the November issue of Biochemistry. The article, “Structural Basis of Substrate Recognition by Hematopoietic Tyrosine Phosphatase,” was a product of his undergraduate research at Brown University, which focused on x-ray crystallography structural analysis of Hematopoietic Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase (HePTP).
Kaity Wallace, MS2
Kaity Wallace, MS2 submitted an abstract to the 2009 International Anesthesia Research Society Meeting that was ultimately selected as one of the top 16. Her project, “Evaluation of the BIS Monitor as a Gauge of Post-Recovery,” emanated from her research with Dr. David Glick during the 2008 Summer Research Program.
Jina Youn, MS2
MS2 Jina Youn is the recipient of the American Academy of Neurology’s Sanofi-Aventis Award. The award serves to recognize students interested in pursuing a career in neurology who have a demonstrated commitment to serve underrepresented communities. Jina will travel to Seattle later this spring to accept that award at the Academy’s annual meeting.
Lucia Navar, MS3
*Correction: In the Winter 2009 issue of the Pritzker Pulse, we reported that three students participated in the North American Primary Care Research Group Meeting. We failed to mention the important contributions of Lucia Navar, MS3, who was the first author on the poster presentation “Point-of-Care Information Technology Use by Community Health Center Physicians” and who collaborated on the other research projects named.
