UChicago medical students publish first-author research

Medical school is a notoriously challenging experience filled with textbooks, exams and clinical rotations. So it might come as a surprise that most students at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine have another big pursuit on their to-do lists: publishing their own research.

And the work is appearing in world-renowned journals like JAMA, Nature and Science.

“Not a week goes by that I don’t hear about a Pritzker student doing amazing research,” said Vineet Arora, MD, MAPP'03, Dean of Medical Education. “Sometimes, mentors reach out to me with exciting milestones, but other times I just stumble across our students’ names on plenary speaker lists or in top journals.”

This wave is fueled by the Scholarship & Discovery component of the medical school’s curriculum, in which every student participates in a four-year mentored research program. As a result, approximately 90 percent have published in a peer-reviewed journal by graduation, while 93 percent have authored an abstract or poster.

The achievement distinguishes Pritzker graduates from their peers, said Jeanne Farnan, MD'02, MHPE, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education, who noted that fewer than 70 percent of medical students nationally authored a peer-reviewed paper, oral or poster presentation.

Although medical students facing ever-steeper competition for residencies and fellowships might feel driven to pursue research just for their resumes, Arora says Pritzker students also care deeply about producing strong, valuable work and finding answers to the questions that interest them.

Laying the groundwork

During their first year, Pritzker students can enroll in the school’s Summer Research Program (SRP). As part of the effort, which includes a spring prep class and proposal submission, students receive guidance from a faculty mentor to conduct research and present their results at an end-of-summer forum. Grants from the National Institutes of Health and Pritzker funds provide stipends for students.

Through the SRP, Wendy Luo began researching pandemic-era trends in intentional adolescent acetaminophen overdoses, which culminated in her publishing a first-author paper in Hospital Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, during her third year.

“It’s really been a highlight of my career so far,” said Luo, who is now in her fourth year at Pritzker. “The mentorship and financial support I received helped me see it through from start to finish.”

The SRP isn’t the only opportunity. After taking the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) Step 1 in their second year, all Pritzker students have a dedicated block of time for research.

“Not everything works out the first time, so the second block gives people the chance to find a new mentor and start on a new project that will finish by their fourth year,” said Rachel Wolfson, MD’00, Assistant Dean of Medical School Research. “For other people, that extra time is what they need to finish up an SRP project or get it to publication.”

Like many of his Pritzker classmates have done, Liam Spurr, MD’24, accepted the challenge. In November 2022, he published two first-author papers about associations between tumor aneuploidy and cancer treatment response in the Nature family of journals on the very same day.

“I chose to devote time to research because that’s where my passions lie,” Spurr said.

Pritzker also sponsors the national Scholarly Concentrations Collaborative, which is led by Wolfson and composed of faculty leaders of medical student research programs across the US. The collaborative supports creating new programs, promotes discussions of challenges and opportunities for students, and has published original research on how residency program directors consider student research in the residency selection process.

Career-defining guidance

Some schools scramble to find enough help to nurture young researchers, Wolfson said. “But at UChicago, I walk across campus and get stopped by faculty who ask, ‘How can I find a student to mentor?’” she said.

Students may reach out directly to faculty, while others opt to match with a mentor via an online form that students and staff call the “eHarmony letter,” a joking reference to the online dating platform. The ensuing professional relationships can last years, with many students working with their mentors long past graduation to finish projects or to get career advice.

Pritzker student Alex Wang recently first-authored a paper published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society revealing a connection between sensory disabilities and mental health in older adults. In conversation and in the paper’s discussion section, he advocates for greater recognition of and support for sensory disabilities.

His research mentor, Jayant Pinto, MD, a Professor of Surgery and Medicine, called him “passionate” and said Wang was the catalyst who developed the initial question during SRP and led the entire project. Wang, now in his third year, acknowledged the difficulty of balancing research and academics, but said it was well worth the effort.

For Sid Ramesh, MD’24, MS’24, who is now a resident in internal medicine at UChicago Medicine, the relationships paved the way for him to get a funded research year and enroll in the Physician Scientist Development Program, a postgraduate training program at UChicago.

Ramesh, who has first-authored research published in Nature Cancer and presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, among other outlets, is continuing to work on research projects in oncology, machine learning and quantum computing that began during his time at Pritzker.

“Mentorship goes a long way toward getting people invested in research,” said Ramesh, who credits much of his career trajectory to his mentor, Alexander Pearson, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine.

With guidance from Pearson and the program, “I'm on a physician-scientist track in oncology, which is relatively atypical for someone without an MD/PhD degree,” Ramesh said. “None of this would have been possible without my mentors and everyone at UChicago who moved heaven and earth to get me where I am.”

SRP, which just completed its 30^th year, is funded through training grants and funds from NIA, NCI, NHLBI, NIDDK, The University of Chicago Medicine’s Center for Healthcare Delivery Science and Innovation (HDSI), Burroughs Wellcome Fund BEST-PREP, Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence, and the Pritzker School of Medicine.