Ayush Kumar, a third-year medical student from the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, is the winner of the 2024 AMA Research Challenge, the largest national, multi-specialty medical research conference for medical students, residents and international medical graduates.
Content on this page for the 2024 competition is open access, but access to winning posters from past years is a member-exclusive.
2024 Research Challenge winner: Ayush Kumar
What was the winning research?
Kumar’s research—"Enhancing the radiosensitivity of triple-negative breast cancer by targeting VEGF/Neuropilin-2” (PDF)—beat out a field of more than 1,300 abstract submissions from medical students, resident physicians and fellows, and international medical graduates. Kumar’s research focused on triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive form of the disease. By identifying that blocking a certain protein with an antibody could make radiation therapies more effective—testing the findings on lab-grown cancer cells and mice with tumors—the research could ultimately lead to a new way to treat triple-negative breast cancer.
What did the judges like?
“Listening to somebody at his tenure in medical education present, identifying the clinical question, understanding the science, his facility with that science, creating the experiments...“capacity to communicate that in this type of presentation is unique."
—Sanjay Desai, MD, MACP, AMA chief academic officer
The judges were “impressed both by the science, and the importance of the question, as well as the very clear presentation of the very interesting results.”
—Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, MD, PhD, MAS, editor-in-chief of JAMA® and the JAMA Network.
Research tip from Ayush
"One of the biggest things in research is learning to communicate something very complicated in a way that’s easily digestible to others...That has translated into my ability to be an advocate for patients and explain medical treatments in a way they can understand."
2024 finalists
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:
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
