Student Research Oportunities

Student Exchange Program

“Rising Star” Research Exchange Program

The “Rising Star” research exchange program is an ongoing trans-atlantic cooperation between the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at Yale School of Medicine and the Department of Radiology at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, Germany. Initiated by the former Radiology chairman Professor Jeff Geschwind, Dr. Julius Chapiro, and their European partner Professor Bernhard Gebauer (Charité), this exchange program was designed to give medical students from Berlin a unique opportunity to work on their doctoral thesis in the United States. The program began in early 2013 at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD and continued after relocating to Yale. Professor Geschwind proudly stepped in as scientific supervisor of the program and describes the program as seeking to “support the next generation of physician-scientists early in their medical careers and to excite them for radiological research, which reaches far beyond what they have learned in medical school.” Dr. Chapiro describes the program as offering “transformative, once-in-a-lifetime experiences and opportunities to young researchers from Berlin.” He describes the hallmark of this collaboration as the “dedication to research, extraordinary discipline, and family-like, diverse research team which unites the best and the brightest in one research lab.”

The competitive application process in Germany seeks to identify highly motivated students with the genuine desire to tackle complex scientific problems. “We are not looking for students who simply seek to add some research to their CVs,” says Professor Gebauer, vice- chairman of Radiology at Charité and thesis supervisor for all exchange students. “We want to give our greatest talents the opportunity to prove themselves abroad in one of the most outstanding research institutions worldwide,” says Professor Gebauer. The participants of the exchange are generously supported by the Rolf W. Günther Foundation for Radiology and Radiological Sciences (www.rwguenther-stiftung.de), which was founded in 2006 by Professor Rolf W. Günther to support research in different subspecialties within radiology. Professor Günther is the former chairman of the Department of Radiology at the University Hospital Aachen in Germany and current Distinguished Professor in Research & Development of Interventional Radiology at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin.

After arriving at Yale, the exchange students are fully integrated and treated as independent members of the Yale Interventional Oncology Research Lab. Students are immediately assigned to ongoing research projects and are expected to lead and complete an independent research assignment within the period of their stay at Yale which usually lasts between 6 to 12 months. Each student is supervised closely and benefits from a “tandem-mentoring” concept which connects the visiting student with more senior researchers in the lab for the entire duration of their stay. Each research project embodies the main mission of the lab, to expand the frontiers of knowledge about local image-guided tumor therapies of liver cancer and interventional oncology, an exciting new and continuously growing branch of radiology. Research projects may include basic science research on tumor metabolism, translational research and clinical trials, or studies with an emphasis on biomedical engineering and image analysis. To contribute to the larger scientific community, each student is expected to submit at least one scientific abstract to an international scientific meeting and to conclude his or her project with one first-author publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Within this framework, intensive and individual mentoring and tight supervision are provided to help lead students to success. The program mentors state, “It is our mission in academic medicine to teach research skills just like we teach clinical skills. Otherwise, we will lose our qualitative edge over non-academic tertiary care centers in the long run, which will factually jeopardize our ability to lead.”

This innovative framework has already yielded tremendous results; as the first participant of the exchange program, Lynn Jeanette Savic completed her basic science project with an equal first-author publication in Clinical Cancer Research, a paper which has been officially recognized by the Molecular Cancer Research Center in Berlin with the prestigious Recognition Award in 2016. Lynn Savic has also set a high standard for her successors in the lab with a total of nine published papers in peer-reviewed journals. She was also selected for the Medical Excellence Grant in the category of Science Excellence provided by the Manfred Lautenschläger Foundation in Germany. Both Lynn Savic and her successor, Florian Nima Fleckenstein, have been awarded student scholarships by the German National Academic Foundation. As a special highlight and testament to the quality of scientific training, Lynn has now returned to the U.S. in her new role as a postdoctoral fellow at Yale after graduating from medical school in Berlin. Other exchange students, Boris Gorodetski, Florian Fleckenstein, and Susanne Smolka presented their research in key scientific sessions at the Annual Meeting of the Radiologic Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago in 2014, 2015 and 2016. “I am truly honored to be given the chance to be a part of this incredible research team. Completing my thesis in the U.S. meant fulfilling a childhood dream,” says Florian Fleckenstein who received a travel grant from the German Cancer Society Berlin for his research. Susanne Smolka, whose research was featured in an exclusive interview published on the front page of the RSNA Daily Bulletin in 2015 believes in the future of the exchange program. She says, “Ever since our lab relocated to Yale, we have worked tirelessly to establish the infrastructure and to continue our success story at our new institution, and I know we have succeeded.” In November 2015, the Yale Radiology Research Lab welcomed two additional exchange students from Germany, David Wainstejn and Duc Do Minh, and in March 2016, Bruno Tegel joined the team. All three students conducted exceptional research during the course of their stay. Notably, Duc Do Minh simultaneously managed to develop remarkable programming capabilities. Since then, Milena Miszczuk and Irvin Rexa also successfully completed the program in March 2017.

Tabea Borde and Lucas Adam, a graduate psychologist, are two medical students from Berlin who currently participate in this research exchange. In July 2017, Charlie Hamm will follow their footsteps and will be joined by Isabel Schobert in October, who will participate in the renowned Biomedical Sciences Education Program (BMEP) as a DAAD research scholar.

Summer Scholarship

Medical Student Summer Research Program

Since the inception of the Radiology Research Lab at Yale in 2015, Yale medical students have been participating in summer research internships that have played an integral role in the Lab’s success and have found the experience rewarding scientifically, boosting in career development, and gratifying in mentorship. The medical students have been conducting independent research and have been demonstrating a track record of scholarship. Upon joining the lab, students are immediately paired with senior lab members and start assisting on active research projects while also developing an independent project that the medical student will lead to completion. Students join the lab during their first year of medical school, and engage in NIH funded, full-time research during their first summer for a period of 8 to 10 weeks. By the end of their tenure, all previous students have submitted scientific abstracts for presentation at internationally recognized scientific meetings and have concluded independent projects with first-author publications in peer-reviewed journals. Many students have received distinction in awards.

The Yale Radiology Research Lab is focused on a wide variety of research applications. The primary research area is driving the advancement of loco-regional image-guided tumor therapies in interventional oncology, a rapidly developing branch of radiology. In this context, medical students are introduced to research projects in a well-developed collaborative network to learn all steps from conduction of experiments to manuscript preparation where the goal is to contribute to innovation that meaningfully improves patient outcomes. Examples of research projects the Lab conducts include basic science projects on tumor metabolism, translational work in pre-clinical tumor models, clinical outcomes analysis, and advanced machine learning applications.

Bios of previous students in their research projects, output, and testimonies who have participated in the Yale Medical Student Summer Research Program are below:

Mansur Ghani:

Mansur Ghani joined the lab in November 2015. His research included NIH and Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) grant funded investigations into treatment response predictors in hepatocellular carcinoma after intra-arterial therapy and staging biomarkers for colorectal carcinoma metastasis to the liver. He presented his results in oral presentations at Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) 2017 and World Conference on Interventional Oncology (WCIO) 2017, and was awarded the Dr. Constantine Cope Medical Student Research Award. “I have had an incredible experience at the Yale Radiology Research Lab. The mentorship I have received is the best I have found in my career and the collaborative experience with industry and international institutions is outstanding. I have had tremendous opportunities for growth at the lab, and I am excited for the innovative research I will continue to do with it.”

Arash Fereydooni:

Arash Fereydooni joined the lab in the summer of 2016. His research included NIH and RSNA grant funded investigations into safety and efficacy of smaller irinotecan eluting beads for the treatment of hepatic metastasis from colorectal cancer. He presented his results in oral presentations at SIR 2017. He is very grateful for his time at the Radiology Research Lab. “I have never received such individualized and personal mentorship. People in the group have always challenged me to think more critically and to grow as a researcher. The atmosphere of the group is very collaborative and I am thankful for having had the opportunity to learn from others and contribute to multiple projects.”

Nikitha Murali:

Nikitha Murali joined the Yale Radiology Research Lab in summer of 2017. Since joining the lab, she has authored or co-authored 4 articles in peer-reviewed journals and written a textbook chapter. Her research has focused on developing algorithms that apply image analysis techniques to identify early markers of treatment response after transarterial chemoembolization, a targeted treatment for unresectable liver cancer. “Joining the lab has been an incredible learning experience as a medical student. Backed by a group of diverse and talented researchers, there is something to learn from everyone. Our lab is the embodiment of teamwork – playing a supporting role in others’ projects in addition to pursuing my own has allowed me to grow a wide skillset that I will carry with me into my career as a physician.”

Austin-Marley Windham-Herman:

Austin-Marley Windham-Herman joined the lab in January of 2017. He was awarded an NIH grant for his research on prostate cancer diagnostic imaging markers, and he completed an assessment of time to response of metastatic hepatic tumors after multiple transarterial chemoembolizations. He presented his research at 2017, co-authored multiple abstracts, published a first author review in the American Journal of Hematology/Oncology, and will be presenting an abstract at the Society of Abdominal Radiology (SAR) conference in 2018. “I had a large amount of independent authority and responsibility on my projects and found that between weekly lab meetings, close mentorship, and the opportunities to receive critical feedback I learned an incredible amount about what it means to be a researcher. I loved being able to work and learn with such a dedicated group of colleagues and friends. If you are a medical student with an interest in Radiology at Yale, this is an exceptional lab to be a part of.”

Evan Chen:

Evan Chen joined the lab during the summer of 2017, receiving grant funding from the RSNA for his research on enhancement based staging markers. He co-authored two abstract presentations and will be presenting his work at the 2018 SIR Annual Meeting. Additionally, Evan is the co-president of the Interventional Radiology Interest Group at Yale since 2016. In this capacity, Evan has organized guest lectures from Yale IR physicians to inform medical students of more recently developed procedures or research, and organized a symposium and an IR workshop with the Quinnipiac School of Medicine. “Collaborating with passionate fellow researchers in the Yale Radiology Research Lab has been an incredible experience and something I would highly recommend to all medical students. The work being conducted by the lab is diverse, so I was able to find an area of my own interest and at the same time learn and contribute to other projects encompassing interventional oncology.”