Annual Research Events

Medical Student Research Symposium

The 39th Stanford Medical Student Research Symposium will be held:

3pm - 6pm, May 2, 2024
Berg Hall, LKSC

This Symposium is less structured and formal than other research conferences in order to encourage medical students to communicate the research part of their educational program that is often not shared with their peers. Poster presentations are required by each student (3-6pm).

Research can be in progress or finished; must have a Stanford faculty advisor; and may be a part of an outside fellowship (e.g. Howard Hughes, Sarnoff, etc), internal fellowship (Medical Scholars), research assistantship, MD/PhD program, or Directed Research.

Research presented at this Symposium can be presented and published elsewhere.

Medical Student Research Symposium - Application will open in early March. Students can only submit one project.

Application Form

Interested students will submit their abstract online. More information will be e-mailed once the abstract is received.

Medical Student Research Abstract Preparation

Title – List in BOLD CAPS.
Authors – List the first name, middle initial, and last name of all authors. List your name in bold and indicate the Stanford faculty advisor with whom you conducted research by underlining his/her name.
Departments – List all Departments represented
Arrangement – Use three paragraphs. In general, the paragraph content should be:
First paragraph: general statement of the research topic, including two-to-three sentence background, objective, and approach (the methods can be in the second paragraph also)
Second paragraph: research findings to date
Third paragraph: conclusion, implications, further studies
Graphics – Do not use charts, diagrams or tables unless essential.
Greek letters – Use symbols (α) to designate or spell out (alpha).
References – In general try to avoid citing references in your abstract.
Abbreviations/acronyms – It is necessary to define all initially except those commonly used such as DNA, cAMP.
Length – Stay under 300 words and/or one page (using 12pt Arial font).
Funding – Acknowledge funding source in separate final sentence in italics (e.g., Funding provided by the Stanford Medical Scholars Fellowship Program).

Sample Abstract

SUPER-RESOLUTION MAGNETIC RESONANCE FINGERPRINTING

Judith Mizrachi, Marco Barbieri, Akshay Chaudhari, and Garry Gold. Department of Radiology

The introduction of super-resolution microscopy techniques has informed nearly every field of medicine over the past decade. Various methods exist that enable striking resolution enhancement of light microscopy imaging. Super-resolution Optical Fluctuation Imaging (SOFI) is notable for its versatility in that its only requirement is that structures exhibit random blinking acquired in a stationary temporal image series. This technique has been applied to several traditional microscope imaging modalities, however its use is limited to samples imaged via light microscopy.

Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging, and variants thereof, is a powerful and versatile diagnostic imaging tool. MR provides excellent non-invasive imaging of tissues throughout the body, and achieves meaningful spatial information. However, unlike other modalities such as computer tomography and ultrasound, it provides only a qualitative assessment of tissues. Further, MR imaging is invaluable for analysis of gross physiology, however its application to the illumination of small structures such as microvasculature is currently nonexistent.

We address this problem with the introduction of a novel approach, Super-Resolution Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting, which is the first attempt to apply an optical super-resolution technique (SOFI super resolution microscopy) to MR acquired image data. Our preliminary results in simulated MR data demonstrate both 2-fold resolution improvement and automated tissue-type segmentation. This technique holds promise to enable microscope-level resolution with the non-invasive versatility of MR imaging.

Funding provided by the Stanford Medical Scholars Fellowship Program