The Inquiring Minds of Student Research

As a first-year, Jin joined the Medical Student Research Forum (MSRF) committee to plug into resources, work with a mentor, and help organize the annual event. Now in its 30^th year, the forum drew a record-breaking 200 participants in December 2025. Planned entirely by SOM students, the MSRF features oral presentations and poster sessions in two categories: basic science and clinical science.

This student scholarship extends across NYMC’s schools. Graduate students in the biomedical sciences present their work annually at the Graduate Student Research Forum, now in its 37^th year, which highlights doctoral and master’s research through flash talks, posters, oral presentations, and a keynote. This forum, also organized by students, provides a platform for emerging scientists to share findings, receive feedback, and prepare for careers in academia, industry, or clinical research. Leading scientists, including Nobel laureates, deliver the keynote address.

In the School of Health Sciences and Practice (SHSP), the annual Research and Scholarship Day is an opportunity for students and recent graduates to present their research findings, concepts and proposals, scholarship results, case presentations and series, and dissertations and theses. From Medicaid cost trends to interventions on postural control for children with cerebral palsy, the students showcase a wide range of projects and highlight innovative approaches to complex health challenges.

“The goal is for students to present their research to a general audience; explain difficult concepts in a more digestible way; and meet faculty who are able to provide encouraging feedback and suggestions for development,” Jin says. “Getting involved is a way to share my experience in research and encourage others to take part.” The day itself serves as a reward for months of planning. “My friends’ presentations gave me a glimpse into their research approach, the range of interests they have, and how much the College supports those opportunities.”

RESEARCH AS PILLAR, NOT PADDING

“I see research as a foundational pillar of medical education,” says Mary M. Petzke, Ph.D., associate dean for medical student research, associate professor in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, and director of the Biomedical Research Area of Concentration. “It is no longer merely a niche or a resume line that’s ‘nice to have.’ Instead, research calls upon skills such as critical thinking, analysis and observation that students will use every day as future physicians.” As they will with patients, she explains, “our research students shift into detective mode: deriving meaning from data, context, and observations to work toward a conclusion.”  

Furthermore, as data science and informatics loom larger in medicine, research experience and opportunities become critical for students. “To even qualify for certain specialties – dermatology, ophthalmology, surgery—candidates need to produce substantial scholarly output,” says Dr. Petzke.

Over the last decade, under Dr. Petzke’s leadership, student engagement in research has exploded at NYMC. By 2023, 80 percent of medical students participated in research: engaging in fellowships, publishing in prestigious journals, presenting at conferences and driving collaborative projects that address everything from rare gene mutations to global health issues, and from cellular mechanisms to social media comments from patients. In addition, the number of students who published peer-reviewed manuscripts has more than doubled.

The College’s Summer Research Fellowship funds approximately 100 students to pursue investigations between their first and second years of medical school, with clinicians and scientists serving as mentors. In addition, says Dr. Petzke, students increasingly opt to take a research gap year before their final year of medical school.

Dr. Petzke directs the SOM’s Biomedical Research Area of Concentration, with approximately 15 percent of each graduating class earning their medical degree “with distinction in research.” 

“This concentration is designed to give students a way to dive into an area of their personal interest, beyond the medical school curriculum,” says Dr. Petzke. Components include a foundational course taught by physician-scientists from the National Institutes of Health; a third- or fourth-year research elective; a required presentation at the Medical Student Research Forum; and a two-year student research seminar series of presentations themed around investigative specialties, co-run by the Student Research Subcommittee. In these peer-to-peer sessions, two students present their research on Zoom and then discuss how they discovered the opportunity, their experience working with that mentor and lab, and other insights. The most substantial component of the concentration is a mentored research project, which leads to a capstone project involving a published research article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

For students, the concentration provides both structure and flexibility. Participants can pursue research longitudinally, often returning to the same lab or driving question over multiple years to promote deeper inquiry and more meaningful contributions. Faculty mentors guide students not only in experimental design or data interpretation, but also in navigating authorship, abstracts and manuscript preparation. Students studying molecular biology may find themselves learning alongside classmates focused on health policy or population health, reinforcing the idea that discovery in medicine cuts across specialties. That cross-disciplinary nature mirrors the landscape of modern medicine: collaborative, open-ended, and informed by multiple sources of evidence.

Dr. Petzke cites several factors fueling the growth of medical student research in the past decade. “First, we had to develop a system for tracking student research involvement and assessing the impact of our interventions,” she says. “We then initiated schoolwide platforms to enhance communication and resource-sharing among students, mentors, faculty and administrators. We also needed to recognize the time and resource commitments of our faculty mentors in a tangible way, by providing financial support for publications and summer research programs.” She helped establish a dedicated research subcommittee of the Student Senate. “Working with students is the most rewarding aspect of my job.”

DISTILLING BIG DATA

Another challenge that Dr. Petzke faced is that “most students do not enter medical school with backgrounds in biostatistics, which is absolutely key when working with large data sets.” In 2019, Dr. Petzke began to brainstorm with the dean of SOM at the time, Jerry L. Nadler, M.D., who had already identified this gap. Dr. Nadler leveraged resources at the SHSP to launch a program for research support. This evolved into the Center for Collaborative Research (CCR), a team of statisticians and epidemiologists who provide resources and services across NYMC to support successful research projects. “The CCR has been a gamechanger for our research culture,” says Dr. Petzke.

The CCR, under the purview of the Office of the Vice President for Research, is a place for those seeking a methodology for their curiosity. A student might arrive with a clinical observation, like a surprising pattern in patient outcomes, and leave with a refined research question, a feasible study design, and a game plan for statistical analysis. Others seek help in the thick of a project, when early results raise new questions or data sets become complex.

“The CCR exists to turn curiosity into capability. It’s where ideas are challenged, strengthened, and given a clear path forward so that anyone, at any stage, can move from asking questions to advancing knowledge with confidence,” says Salomon Amar, D.D.S., Ph.D., vice president for research and professor of pharmacology and of pathology, microbiology and immunology at NYMC and senior vice president for research affairs at Touro University.

“We use evidence-based medicine to teach medical students the fundamentals of study design and the research process,” says Elizabeth Drugge, Ph.D., M.P.H. ’12, associate professor of public health, director of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) Curricular Theme, and director of CCR. “They go hand in hand. Once they have foundational competencies under their belt, they can begin research from a more sophisticated vantage, with more confidence.” CCR remains engaged with students throughout their investigations, from study design through publication.

Recently, Dr. Petzke acquired a set of real-world hospital data from millions of patient encounters across the country through the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), a federally sponsored aggregate of databases. Gathered from de-identified billing and discharge records, this information broadens the aperture for researchers.

“As clinicians, we treat individuals; but the evidence guiding solid research is drawn from wider patient populations,” says Dr. Drugge. “Specialties like epidemiology, biostatistics, and population health emphasize that macro-level aspect of inquiry, teaching students to become more sophisticated researchers.”

Working with swaths of data primes students to think about broader patterns that shape clinical practice and health policy. Students learn to reflect on both results and limitations: who is (or is not) represented in the data, and how both clinical and non-clinical factors may shape outcomes. Many students decide to leverage research to address the social determinants of health: factors such as housing, income, access to food or social isolation that often dramatically impact clinical outcomes.

“Clinicians today need to be well-versed in the biopsychosocial model of health,” says Dr. Drugge. “The more they understand and factor this holistic lens into research, the more sensitive they become to populations that may be under-represented in medicine.” In fact, she says, students have conducted systematic reviews of under-representation in clinical trials among minorities who carry a greater burden of disease.

That mindset animates the annual SHSP Research and Scholarship Day, highlighting work in public health, physical therapy, speech-language pathology, and health policy. Because evidence-based inquiry shapes policy decisions, clinical protocols and interventions, this research into epidemiology, community-based research, health equity, and implementation science accrues powerful real-world impact.

For example, Donald MacElroy, SOM Class of 2026, and Jay B. Ayar, Dr. P.H. ’25, of the SHSP, published a study in the Journal of Orthopaedics with faculty at Westchester Medical Center, a major clinical affiliated site. This student-led team asked whether patients who are legally blind have a riskier hospital experience when they receive cervical or lumbar spinal fusion surgery, compared with patients who are not legally blind. With data from the National Inpatient Sample Dataset, they found that blind patients had a 58 percent higher risk of major post-surgery complications; higher likelihood of non-home discharge; and an increased chance of longer hospital stays. These findings build evidence for strategies serving legally blind patients, such as vision-aware rehab protocols and cross-disciplinary care teams. Last year, Dr. Drugge joined Dr. Ayar and Rebecca Strafella, SOM Class of 2026, to examine whether race is associated with maternal morbidity among pregnant patients with polycystic ovary syndrome, again using national inpatient data to identify nearly 20,000 patients. The published study highlighted persistent racial disparities to support clinical and public health interventions.

In addition to supporting students in research methods through individual meetings and courses, CCR works to connect students with ongoing projects, encouraging collaboration with other researchers and mentors. CCR also introduces faculty and residents to students who can help advance their initiatives.

“Most importantly,” says Dr. Drugge, “we want students to be knowledgeable when interpreting literature, and confident when presenting research, so they can continue to become evidence-based practitioners and/or clinical researchers.”

SPEAKING THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF SCIENCE

“Research benefits everyone: students, faculty, mentors, patients, and NYMC as an institution,” says Dr. Petzke. On the annual Match Day of residency placements, “many students tell me their research background helped them stand out in residency interviews or evaluations, or that they networked at a conference to gain connections.”

“For our faculty,” she adds, “medical students are more than extra pairs of hands. They’re extra brains with fresh perspectives and newer skills, such as coding in the programming language of Python.” The next step is ensuring students have computing power, data analysis software, and tools for the emerging research field of precision medicine, such as gene-editing technologies like CRISPR.

In Grand Rounds at NYMC affiliates, says Dr. Drugge, “we try to impress upon residents and attending physicians that medical students are already coming in at a sophisticated level, and can be contributors to any research project.”

Ultimately, investing in student research strengthens NYMC’s academic mission. Student projects often seed larger faculty investigations, contribute to multi-center collaborations, and generate insights that inform clinical practice across affiliated hospitals. As students move into residencies and fellowships nationwide, they carry with them not only technical skills, but a commitment to lifelong learning.

Jin took advantage of NYMC’s class in the open-source programming language R. Provided by CCR, this course is designed for statistical computing and data visualization. “Learning R helped me understand how to interpret and present data in an aesthetically pleasing, clear-cut way,” he says. Beyond coding, he says, this requires “thinking through how to condense huge blocks of text or spreadsheet columns into tables and graphs.”

“The great thing about presenting data,” he adds, “is that you begin to speak the universal language of science.”

Jin has since pivoted to translational and clinical science, with a summer internship at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston to investigate auto-immunity in Type 1 Diabetes. He has also examined the growth of cystic fibrosis in the small intestines of patients. “My foundation of basic science, observing small intestines in mice, helped me better understand and explain to patients the granular aspects of cystic fibrosis, how small and subtle changes can affect their bodies on a large scale,” he says. “The skills of research translate to virtually every field.” That includes softer skills, too: “Working with people and their data requires a certain level of care and sensitivity.”

Indeed, beyond the prestige of publication or even the Eureka! moment, leaders at the College understand that students tend to carry a research mindset into clinical settings, where careful listening and thoughtful inquiry can elevate routine care into truly personalized medicine.

Speaking at the 2025 MSRF, Mill Etienne, M.D. ’02, M.P.H., vice chancellor, associate dean for student affairs, and professor of neurology and of medicine, affirmed this sentiment. “One of the most important traits for a student to have, aside from humanism and bedside manner, is curiosity,” Dr. Etienne said. Indeed, intellectual curiosity is among the guiding values of NYMC: the impulse to seek answers that change lives.