AMA Research Challenge winning posters

Addison Shenk, a fourth-year medical student from Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine, is the winner of the 2025 AMA Research Challenge, the largest national, multi-specialty medical research conference for medical students, residents, and international medical graduates.

2025 Research Challenge winner: Addison Shenk

Addison Shenk's winning research

Hands-On Naloxone Training: Advancing Curriculum and Assessment through Simulated Manikins Learning

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What was the winning research?

Shenk’s research—“Hands-On Naloxone Training: Advancing Curriculum and Assessment Through Simulated Manikins Learning” (PDF, members only)—beat out a field of more than 1,400 abstract submissions from medical students, resident physicians and fellows, and international medical graduates. Shenk’s research focused on improving opioid overdose response training among medical students. By testing whether adding realistic, scenario-based simulation with manikins to standard classroom instruction could enhance performance and confidence—evaluating outcomes like time to recognition, skill application, and knowledge retention over six months—the study suggests a more effective way to prepare future providers to respond to opioid overdoses.

What did the judges like?

“It was really exiting to see what Ms. Shenk has put together addressing this urgent need around opiate use disorder.”

—Sanjay Desai, MD, MACP, AMA chief academic officer

2025 finalists

Bijoya Basu

A hormone circuit from fat to hippocampus drives a novel, druggable anxiety pathway (PDF)

Tiffany Bellomo, MD

Lipoprotein(a) is a Prognostic Marker of Extracoronary Atherosclerotic Vascular Disease Progression (PDF)

Karishma Popli, MD, MBE

Development, Implementation and Evaluation of a Novel Neuropalliative Care Education Curriculum (PDF)

Anthony Wong

Machine Learning-Guided Design of Next Generation Triple Agonist Peptide Therapeutics for Metabolic Disease (PDF)

Member exclusive

Interested in viewing more winning posters from previous years of the AMA Research Challenge? Become a member to get exclusive access to posters from past winners and finalists on a variety of research areas, including:

2024

• Hands-on naloxone training: advancing curriculum and assessment through simulated manikins learning
• A hormone circuit from fat to hippocampus drives a novel, druggable anxiety pathway
• Lipoprotein(a) is a prognostic marker of extracoronary atherosclerotic vascular disease progression
• Development, implementation and evaluation of a novel neuropalliative care education curriculum
• Machine learning-guided design of next-generation triple agonist peptide therapeutics for metabolic disease

2023

• Detection of cholangiocarcinoma with protease activity probes (winning poster)
• Effect of mesenchymal stromal cell delivery through cardiopulmonary bypass in a piglet model
• White matter markers for treatment outcomes in major depressive disorder
• Effects of obesity on the neuromuscular junction of genioglossus muscle and other associated muscles of respiration
• Utilizing a ML-enabled EMR provider workflow to improve non-clinical tasks

2022

• Decoding pregnancy loss: validating a novel genetic biomarker of poor egg quality (winning poster)
• The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) as a novel therapeutic target in neuroblastoma
• Stereotactic body radiation therapy versus wedge resection for early-stage node-negative non-small cell lung cancer tumors ≤8 mm: a national analysis
• Audiovisual feedback from a handheld monitoring device improves manual ventilation
• AI-powered fully automated early detection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma on standard-of-care CT scans

2021

• Genomic adaptation of moraxella catarrhalis during persistence in the airways of COPD patients (winning poster)
• Epidemiology and prevalence of lung disease amongst e-cigarette users in the USA - a national study
• How do medical school experiences differ between students from low- vs. higher SES backgrounds? A multicenter U.S. survey study.
• Trauma-informed care in pediatrics: An interactive module for clerkship students
• Socioeconomic diversity of matriculating U.S. medical students by race and ethnicity, from 2017 to 2019