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Student Research Forum participant profiles

Name: Caleb Molokwu

Presented at and won: 2008 National Student Research Forum - (1) Sigma Xi Award for a Poster Presentation First Place, (2) Dr. Bohdan R. Nechay Memorial Award for the Best Poster Presentation in Pharmacology and Toxicology, and (3) UTMB Obstetrics & Gynecology for the Best Poster Award

Hometown: Dayton, Ohio

School/Institution name: Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine

Year in school/institution: 4th year

Favorite areas of study: Primary Care preventive medicine

What are your career goals?
Becoming a primary care physician in either preventive or occupational medicine and spending half of my time working in the research lab. Because balancing the needs and demands of work and family life is a difficult assignment for most physicians. I hope to make the best use of the busy time as a physician to keep working on my research project.

Has your experience at the research forum influenced or helped your research and/or career?
My experience at the research forum cannot be summarized in one word, the great valor of speech giving by the guest speaker and the other co-speakers, talking about their individual experience and what they had to overcome to be this successful, has changed my perspectives in my research and life in general. I will continue to endeavor in exploring numerous activities to truly test this desire to answer any puzzled question, which will further reinforce my aspiration to research and clinical medicine. These experiences encouraged my personal development and facilitated a profoundly informed insight into the level of empathy, compassion, enthusiasm and stamina required to be a well rounded physician scientist.

Name: Meghan Sise

Presented at and won: 2008 National Student Research Forum - AMA Foundation Award for Overall Excellence in Clinical Research

Hometown: Loudonville, NY

School/Institution name: Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons

Year in school/institution: 4th year

Favorite areas of study: Internal Medicine, Nephrology and Infectious Diseases

What are your career goals?
This fall I will be applying for residency in internal medicine.  I plan on pursuing specialty training and continuing clinical research. I would like to practice and teach at a university medical center and to continue to work with underserved populations.

Other comments, such as how you became interested in research, your view on important issues and challenges that face medical research, an experience during school or prior to school that had an impact on your views about research, etc.
I realized I was interested in research during my third year of medical school.  During the first two years of medical school, I was focused on studying and learning as much as I could to prepare for being a clinical clerk. Once on the wards, I began to appreciate that there is a great deal in medicine that remains unknown and unstudied. I found that I approached most clinical problems by trying to imagine studies that could answer clinical questions. During the middle of third year, I applied and was awarded a one-year Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellowship. This program has provided a clinical research training program and salary funding for full-time clinical research.  During this year I have worked with Dr. Jonathan Barasch studying Neutrophil Gelatinase-Associated Lipocalin (NGAL) in acute and chronic kidney disease.

How has your experience at the research forum influenced or helped your research and/or career?
Presenting at the Eastern-Atlantic and National Student Research Forum has provided a great opportunity to present my work to an audience of peers with differing perspectives in a very collegial atmosphere. Presenting research to peers in a coherent manner is an important aspect of research and one that requires a lot of practice. I am thankful to have had the opportunity to do so at these meetings.

Name: Amy Bellmeyer

Presented at and won: 2007 Midwest Student Biomedical Research Forum - First Place Medical Student Oral Presentation 2007 National Student Research Forum - UTMB School of Medicine, Office of Student Affairs Overall Poster Award

Hometown: Platteville, Wisc.

School/Institution name: University of Illinois-Chicago College of Medicine

Year in school/institution: 2nd year

Favorite areas of study: Pulmonary and critical care, Digestive diseases

What are your career goals?
I have become familiar with the difficulties and frustrations encompassing clinical and basic science research and find them to be both inspiring as well as intellectually satisfying. Therefore, I believe combining medicine and research as a clinician will allow me to develop into an academic physician so that I can enrich my own life and make contributions to the lives of others.

Has your experience at the research forum influenced or helped your research and/or career?
My experience at the Midwest Research Forum allowed me to gain further experience presenting data orally to an audience with broad ranging backgrounds and answer questions directly related to my project and future directions. This has helped me to establish contacts and collaborators at several other institutions which will continue to benefit my research career throughout and beyond medical school.

Name: Jessica Gierut

Presented at and won: 2007 Midwest Student Biomedical Research Forum - First Place Graduate Student Poster Presentation 2007 National Student Research Forum - Sigma Xi Award/First Place Poster

Hometown: Chicago, Ill.

School/Institution name: University of Illinois at Chicago

Year in school/institution: 3rd year graduate student

Favorite areas of study: Cancer research/Signal transduction pathways

What are your career goals?
My long-term career goal is to establish myself as a scientist and scholar in the area of cancer biology with special emphasis on signal transduction in the gastrointestinal tract that leads to cancer progression. The intestinal epithelium is an outstanding model for studying how proliferation, differentiation and death programs are coordinately regulated in a self-renewing epithelium. The intestinal model allows researchers to gain insight to the factors that control homeostasis and how deregulation of signaling pathways can ultimately lead to cancer. As a researcher, I hope to provide the scientific community with valuable knowledge that can guide into the discovery of new anticancer drugs.

How did you become interested in research?
At a young age I always enjoyed my basic biology classes, but what I would choose for a career was never clear until I attended college. The laboratory sections of each biology and chemistry class was where science came to life. The hands-on experience served as a valuable tool for grasping the material in the classroom. I knew a career in research would definitely be the best choice.

Has has your experience at the research forum influenced or helped your research and/or career?
The forum allowed me to practice my presentation skills. Research isn’t just about getting results. How one is able to express and pass on information to the scientific community is another component of research and the forum was an excellent stage. Attending and winning awards at the research forum helped me to become accept into the AACR workshop about the Pathobiology of Cancer. This intensive one week course focuses on the molecular and morphological aspects of cancer that I am sure will aid my understanding of the etiology, prevention and treatment of human cancer.

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