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Poster Day Showcases Students’ Summer Work

How do mice use spatial memory to navigate mazes? If scientists understood that in a mouse model, could it move them closer to finding help for memory impairment in humans?

Mentored research

Through the Summer Research Fellowship Program at Northeast Ohio Medical University, medicine or pharmacy students gain intensive training in research procedures by working (often side by side) with research mentors. The program culminates each year in an event called Poster Day.

A record number of students participated in this year’s event, held Monday, Aug. 19, in the NEOMED Education and Wellness (NEW) Center Ballroom. Student posters were mounted for all to see. Over the lunch hour, many of the participants could be found by their projects, talking with faculty members and interested fellow students or staff.

Alyssa McIntire (pictured above), a third-year College of Pharmacy student who spent the summer working on Parkinson’s research with Sheila Fleming, Ph.D., assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences, and William Chilian, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Integrative Medical Sciences,  said she was attracted to the summer opportunity because of the chance to start a project from the ground up.

The work was so interesting that she hopes to continue part-time during the school year, McIntire said.

Many of the 96 participants had completed NEOMED’s Summer Research Fellowship Program, in which they were matched with NEOMED researchers and paid a stipend for their work. Others had completed  internships or programs elsewhere in Ohio, as well as institutions including the National Cancer Institute, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Harvard University.

Summer Preceptorship

Yet another group displaying posters at the event represented participants in the Leroy Rogers Summer Preceptorship Program of the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians. Students were paired with family physicians whose routines they got to know as they shadowed them and took on responsibilities over the summer. One such participant was Jonathan Seok, a medicine student and student representative on the NEOMED Board of Trustees who worked at Jackson Family Practice in Canton, Ohio.

Another was Salam Osman, who with the oversight of Deborah Plate, D.O., created an educational flyer on the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. Osman later shared the flyer with the SOAR Student-Run Free Clinic, in hopes that NEOMED students might present it to patients at their Saturday clinics.

A tradition of research

Student projects in the Summer Research Fellowship Program are funded by the Office of Research & Sponsored Programs, under the direction of Steven P. Schmidt, Ph.D., vice president for research and dean of the College of Graduate Studies.

Read more about summer research opportunities. Deadlines for next summer’s events will be posted on the website.