The Medical Student Summer Research Program (MSSRP) concluded with an engaging Poster Day, showcasing the work of 52 first- and second-year medical students who spent the summer conducting research in biomedical, clinical, and population health sciences.
Guided by faculty mentors and researchers from the University of Ottawa and its partner institutions, participants gained valuable experience in study design, data analysis, and scientific communication.
Guided by faculty mentors and researchers from the University of Ottawa and its partner institutions, participants gained valuable experience in study design, data analysis, and scientific communication.
This year’s projects reflected a remarkable range of research themes — from neonatal medicine and cardiovascular imaging to mental health, health systems improvement, and immunology — demonstrating the depth and breadth of inquiry across the university’s research community.
Three presentations stood out to the evaluation committee for their quality and impact:
🏅 1st place: Melisa Eraslan — "An Evaluation of Ottawa Paramedic Services’ Mental Wellbeing Response Team Model of Care"
Supervisor: Claire Kendall
🥈 2nd place: Ameya Kabra — "Pharmacological Stress Myocardial Perfusion Imaging with 18F-flurpiridaz PET for Improved Diagnosis of Coronary Artery Disease"
Supervisor: Robert deKemp
🥉 3rd place: Alecco Philippi — "Metabolic Substrate Preferences of Human Macrophage Subsets and the Impact of mTORC1 Inhibition"
Supervisor: Angela Crawley
| Name | Poster Title | Supervisor |
| Alec Weller | Understanding the delivery of Indigenous health topics and anti-racism content in Indigenous health education: a mixed methods study | Dr. Douglas Archibald |
| Alecco Philippi | Metabolic Substrate Preferences of Human Macrophage Subsets and the Impact of mTORC1 Inhibition | Dr. Angela Crawley |
| Ameya Kabra | Pharmacological Stress Myocardial Perfusion Imaging with 18F-flurpiridaz PET for Improved Diagnosis of Coronary Artery Disease | Dr. Robert deKemp |
| Amirashkan Bouriayee | Salvage High Dose-Rate Prostate Brachytherapy as Reirradiation - A Retrospective Review of Outcomes at The Ottawa Hospital | Dr. Mark Corkum |
| Andréanne Ménard | When Faced with the Unexpected: A Narrative Inquiry into Anesthesiologists’ Emotional Experiences of Unanticipated Difficult Airway Management | Dr. Meghan McConnell |
| Andrew Tucker | Sit-to-Stand Biomechanics in Pre-operative Cam-type FAI: Comparison with Healthy Controls | Dr. Sasha Carsen |
| Angela Li | Eligibility Criteria and Consent Practices of Randomized Controlled Trials in Trauma Care: A Systematic Review | Dr. Alexandre Tran |
| Angela Todorovski | Impact of Clonal Hematopoiesis of Indeterminate Potential on Arterial Atherothrombosis and Venous Thromboembolism : A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis | Dr. Yan Xu |
| Caleb Bresolin | The Effect of Botulinum Toxin-A Injection Treatment for Persistent Post-Traumatic Headache in Working-Age Adults: A Systematic Review | Dr. Shawn Marshall |
| Caroline Champagne | Effectiveness of a Recurrent Pregnancy Loss Clinic: A Systematic Review | Dr. Clara Wu |
| Catherine Kim | Comparing FDG PET and CT in Lung Cancer Patients with Suspected Local Recurrence Following SBRT | Dr. Wanzhen Zeng |
| Chelsea Montgomery | Assessing Mental Health Correlates of Burnout in Healthcare Workers: A Longitudinal Analysis | Dr. Jennifer Phillips |
| Daniel Kyrollos | Evaluating Pretrained Models for Lung Lobe Segmentation | Dr. Ran Klein |
| Élise MacAdam | Developing a National Partnership to Improve In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest (IHCA) Care and Outcomes. | Dr. Christian Vaillancourt |
| Emily Liang | Predicting Patient-Centred Disability Among Older Adults after Non-Cardiac Elective Surgery | Dr. Daniel McIsaac |
| Emmanuel Fagbola | Racial & Gender Biases when investigating for Coronary Artery Disease | Dr. Benjamin Chow |
| Giorgio Freije | Quantitative Analysis of 99mTc Pyrophosphate Imaging for Diagnosis of Transthyretin Cardiac Amyloidosis and Prediction of Outcomes | Dr. Terrence Ruddy |
| Hanbyoul Park | Can a Driving Simulator Distinguish Between MCI Patients and Healthy Older Drivers? | Dr. Frank Knoefel |
| Isabella Miklaucic | A Comparative Study Assessing the Impact of the COVID-19 Vaccine in Pregnant and Non-Pregnant Individuals | Dr. Darine El-Chaâr |
| Ishmanjeet Singh Chahal | Determining the effectiveness of artificial gravity with cycling or whole-body vibration exercise in bed on Achilles tendon alterations following 60 days of bedrest – An MRI-based analysis of the BRACE and BRAVE RandomIzed Control trials: The Achilles MAVERIC study | Dr. Mark Campbell |
| James Rey Lisondra | Surgical Outcomes Following Mitral Surgery: A Prospective Cohort Surgery | Dr. Vincent Chan |
| Julianna Botros | Effectiveness of integrated approaches to delivering mental health care to people experiencing homelessness: An overview of various care models | Dr. Renee Carter |
| Justin Phung | Is Tenecteplase More Efficacious than Alteplase for Distal Occlusions - A Secondary Analysis of the TASTE Trial | Dr. Vignan Yogendrakumar |
| Karishma Tailor | Preeclampsia Ascertainment and Validation Study | Dr. Steven Hawken |
| Katerina Palacek | Novel gene discovery in congenital myasthenic syndromes using optogenetic zebrafish models | Dr. Hanns Lochmuller |
| Kevin Huang | Purification of Human Xenografted Liver Endothelium for Therapeutic Discovery | Dr. Blair Gage |
| Laura Mardiros | Impact of Nurse Practitioners on Emergency Department Access in a Rural Community Hospital | Dr. Paul Beaule |
| Lillian Abebe | Mechanisms of Impaired Mitophagy in Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes | Dr. Mary-Ellen Harper |
| Luka Newton | Organizational Culture Assessment and Roadmap | Dr. Jennifer Alexander |
| Madeline Hopkins | Acute Seizure Action Plans: A Quality Improvement Study | Dr. Sarah Buttle |
| Marie Jo Abdul-Hay | Prevalence and etiologies of visual impairment in the Ottawa inner-city population | Dr. David Maberley |
| Matthew Wei | Identifying regulatory best practices for confirmatory clinical trials to inform clinical trial-enabling preclinical study design: A cross-sectional analysis of international guidance. | Dr. Dean Fergusson |
| Melisa Eraslan | An Evaluation of Ottawa Paramedic Services’ Mental Wellbeing Response Team Model of Care | Dr. Claire Kendall |
| Michelle Moussa | Adaptive Mentoring Networks for Advancing Health Equity: Implementation Stage-Based Determinants and Lessons from Exploration to Sustainment | Dr. Arun Radhakrishnan |
| Miguel Paquette | Perioperative Management of Antithrombotic Therapy in Patients with Thrombotic Antiphospholipid Antibody Syndrome | Dr. Joseph Shaw |
| Mohamed Elmestekawy | Improving Perioperative Care for Semaglutide-Treated Patients: A Quality Improvement Study | Dr. Mohamed Eissa |
| Myriam Adi | MRS Detection of 2-Hydroxyglutarate in Gliomas: MEGA-PRESS DIFF Improves IDH Mutation Classification and Reduces PRESS False Positives | Dr. Thanh Binh Nguyen |
| Nassima Marouf | A retrospective observational study of people living in supportive housing to examine differences in demographics, morbidity and mortality | Dr. Simon Hatcher |
| Natasha Dmytryk | Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) therapy for melanoma: A systematic review to guide a made-in-Canada approach | Dr. Manoj Lalu |
| Neel Thanavala | Validation of an asthma knowledge tool to assess the efficacy of comprehensive pediatric asthma education in improving asthma outcomes | Dr. Dhenuka Radhakrishnan |
| Nikola Kolobaric | Diagnostic accuracy of bedside left ventricular ejection fraction assessment by human versus AI | Dr. Pietro Di Santo |
| Pak Hei Adrian Wong | Real-world outcomes in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) in patients with residual disease after neoadjuvant therapy (NEOCAPE) | Dr. Terry Ng |
| Perla Nabhan | Promoting person-centered care in the emergency room: Testing and evaluating a tool co-designed by patients | Dr. Jonathan Gravel |
| Rama El Hakim | Closing the Gap in Factual Knowledge: A Community Engagement Approach to Death Literacy in Muslim Communities | Dr. Nick Busing |
| Samarth Chauhan | Building Capacity to Develop a Robust Primary Care Network | Dr. Marie-Claude Gagnon |
| Shruthi Sundararaman | Co-Designing Research Tools with Clinicians to Understand and Advance eConsult’s Use in Dementia Care | Dr. Laura Visentin |
| Tanvi Ahluwalia | Investigating the breakdown of glycosaminoglycans in Mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPSI) patient cell lines | Dr. Izabella Pena |
| Véronique Rowley DuVernet | SMART-AI: A Survey of Medical providers' Attitudes and peRceptions about the fuTure of AI in medicine | Dr. Mark Walker |
| Vincent Dinh | Understanding Scaphoid Non-Union in Pediatric Patients | Dr. Kevin Cheung |
| William Barbour | Epidemiology of Contemporary Cardiac Intensive Care Units: A Single-Centre Experience. | Dr. F. Daniel Ramirez |
| Ziru (Grace) Kang | Standardized Goal-Directed vs. Self-Directed Valsalva Maneuver for the Assessment of Patent Foramen Ovale – A blinded comparative crossover diagnostic accuracy study | Dr. David Messika Zeitoun |
| Zoe Ivan | From Barriers to Behaviour Change: Designing a Motivational Interview Model to Improve Participant Engagement in a Multisite Randomized Control Trial on Mindfulness and Pediatric Concussion | Dr. Andrée-Anne Ledoux |
The MSSRP gratefully acknowledges the generous support of its partners:
- The Mach-Gaensslen Foundation, which provided $27,500 to support five projects;
- The Office of Social Accountability, which contributed $24,000 to fund four projects;
- and the supervisors and their departments, for their ongoing mentorship, guidance, and financial support.
These investments make it possible to offer hands-on research experiences that inspire the next generation of clinician-scientists.
The MSSRP continues to provide medical students with early exposure to research and opportunities to contribute to discoveries that advance human health.
Applications for MSSRP 2026 will open at the end of November.