Student Research Day: Medical school tradition continues on May 5

Yale doctors-in-training will show off their scientific side at the School of Medicine’s Student Research Day on Tuesday, May 5.
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Yale doctors-in-training will show off their scientific side at the School of Medicine’s Student Research Day on Tuesday, May 5.

The annual event will include a poster session highlighting Yale students’ M.D. thesis projects, presentations by prize winners, and the Farr Lecture, presented this year by Yale alumnus and Nobel laureate Dr. Brian Kobilka of Stanford University.

Yale is one of the few medical schools to require a dissertation based on original research, a tradition that dates back to 1839. The M.D. thesis is designed to help students develop critical judgment, habits of self-education, and the application of the scientific method to medicine, according to Dr. John N. Forrest Jr., director of the Office of Student Research, noting that it also gives students the opportunity to work closely with faculty who are distinguished scientists, clinicians, and scholars.

Student Research Day has become a spring tradition at the School of Medicine. All classes and conferences are closed for the day, so faculty and students can attend the scientific poster session and the Farr Lectureship that follows. The public is invited.

The events all take place in the Anlyan Center (TAC), 300 Cedar St.

Graduating students will present the results of their research from noon to 2 p.m. in the center’s lobby. The top five students will give oral presentations about their work from 2 to 4 p.m. in the TAC auditorium. The following is a list of year’s presenters, the titles of their projects, and their advisers.

  • Daniel Bohl, “Analysis of Adverse Event Rates Following Orthopaedic Surgery in the United States (Dr. Jonathan Grauer, Department of Orthopaedics snd Rehabilitation)
  • Stefan Gysler, “Novel Mechanisms of Trophoblast Responses to Antiphospholipid Antibodies in Obstetric Antiphospholipid Syndrome” (Dr. Vikki Abrahams, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, & Reproductive Sciences)
  • Sebastian Urday, “Targeting Secondary Injury in Intracerebral Hemorrhage - Peri-hematomal Edema” (Dr. Kevin Sheth, Department of Neurology)
  • Anna Duncan, “The Heterotaxy Candidate Gene, TMEM195, Regulates Nuclear Localization of Beta-catenin” (Dr. Mustafa Khokha, Department of Pediatrics)
  • Emily Bucholz, “Admission Guidelines and Life Expectancy after Acute Myocardial Infarction” (Dr. Harlan Krumholz, Department of Internal Medicine and School of Public Health

Farr Lecture

This year’s Farr Lecturer, Dr. Brian K. Kobilka, has taken part in Yale’s Student Research Day before — as a student. In fact, he won a thesis prize in 1981, the year he earned his M.D. from the School of Medicine.

Dr. Brian Kobilka

Kobilka was co-recipient with Robert Lefkowitz of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR), which constitute the largest family of receptors for hormones and neurotransmitters in the human genome. GPCRs are the largest group of targets for new therapeutics for a very broad spectrum of diseases.

His Farr Lecture, “Structural insights into G protein coupled receptor signaling,” will be presented at 4:30 p.m. in the TAC auditorium.

Kobilka earned Bachelor of Science degrees in biology and chemistry from the University of Minnesota, Duluth in 1977. After graduating from the Yale School of Medicine, he completed residency training in internal medicine in 1984 at the Barnes Hospital, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri. From 1984 to 1989 he was a postdoctoral fellow in Lefkowitz’s laboratory at Duke University. In 1990 he joined the faculty at Stanford University, where he is now the Helen Irwin Fagan Chair in Cardiology and professor of medicine.

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