NEOMED Student on Winning Research Team at American College of Cardiology Conference

Nick Boniface, a third-year Northeast Ohio Medical University College of Medicine student, was a co-author on a presentation that received the Best Poster Award in the Non-Invasive Cardiology section of the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session & Expo held in Chicago from April 2-4. Daniel Morgenstern, a student at the University of Toledo College of Medicine, was first author on the winning abstract, “Pericarditis and Persistent Chest Pain in Women,” which bested projects by students from Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, The Mayo Clinic, Stanford University, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Cleveland Clinic, among many others.

Boniface and NEOMED student Julie Matthews represented NEOMED at the American College of Cardiology meeting, which their professor and research mentor J. Ronald Mikolich, M.D., calls the premier cardiovascular science event in the world and which this year was attended by more than 13,000 people, including physicians and scientists from around the globe. For the Chicago meeting, the research team headed by Dr. Mikolich had three projects accepted for presentations, with Boniface, Matthews and Morgenstern the first author on one project each.

Dr. Mikolich said that over the past four years of working with him on research in advanced cardiac imaging – specifically, cardiac MRI and cardiac CT angiography – Boniface and Matthews have had multiple research abstracts accepted for presentation at national meetings including the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session, Society of Cardiac MRI annual meetings and the American Heart Association Annual Science Session. Dr. Mikolich, who is Internal Medicine and Cardiology Section Chair and director of advanced cardiac imaging at Sharon Regional Health System, accompanied the students to the Chicago meeting earlier this month.