2024 was a busy summer for research in the Section on Infectious Diseases with medical students attending conferences in Australia, Atlanta, and participating in the summer Medical Student Research Program. Faculty and staff mentors are grateful for the hard work and dedication of the students and are looking forward continuing to support our students in their research endeavors.
Josh Manuel presents his project on resistance profiles for Neisseria gonorrhoeae
Mathieu Norcross presents his project on the evolutionary dynamics of Marbug virus
Jaden Seman presents his project on the evolutionary dynamics of Monkeypox virus and Mpox
Abson Mandola presents his project on assessing the impact of bot infliltration on an STI surveys
CDC’s STI Conference
Emily Ye and Taylor Ellis presented their poster titled “Campus Confidential: Decoding Sexual Health Education for College Students” at the CDC’s STI Conference in Atlanta, GA mentored by Dr. Candice J. McNeil with statistical support from Jennifer J. Wenner.
International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases
Abson Mandola presented his poster titled “Attack of the Bots: When an STI Survey Goes Viral” at the International Union Against Sexually Transmitted Infections Conference in Sydney, Australia mentored by Dr. Candice J. McNeil, Michael E. DeWitt, and Jennifer J. Wenner. Abson was also awarded a travel grant from the International Union Against Sexually Transmitted Infections to attend the conference.
Medical Student Research Program
The Medical Student Research Program is a compensated, 9 week, full-time summer research experience for rising 2nd year Wake Forest School of Medicine students. This program requires the students to select a mentor and a project from a list of approved projects or develop their own project with the support of a mentor. It includes authoring an NIH-style grant application and presenting their research at the Medical Student Research Day.
As part of the research experience in Infectious Diseases, members of the Section on Infectious Diseases mentor students in program and also held weekly “lunch and learn” style seminars which included discussions of their research along with talks conducted by invited speakers. These discussions included topics in:
- biosecurity and biosurveillance
- biostatistics that you should know
- ecology and evolotion in infectious diseases
- use of Artificial Intelligence in infectious disease research
- rabies dynamics
- vaccine field trials
- and more!
Josh Manuel presented his poster “Patient Population-Specific Analysis of Neisseria gonorrhoeae Antibiotic Resistance Markers in Guilford County, North Carolina Using Whole Genome Sequencing” at the Medical Student Research day. This work was mentored by Jennifer J Wenner, Thomas F. Wierzba, John W. Sanders, Candice J. McNeil, and Michael E. DeWitt.
Musa Malik presented his posted “Epidemiological Trends and Bio-Surveillance of Tularemia: A Systematic Review” at the Medical Student Research day. This work was mentored by Michael E. DeWitt, John W. Sanders, and Thomas F. Wierzba.
Jaden Seman presented his poster “Apoxalypse: Evaluating the evolution and transmission dynamics of Mpox and its pandemic potential” at the Medical Student Research day. This work was mentored by Michael E. DeWitt, John W. Sanders, and Thomas F. Wierzba.
Mathieu Norcross presented his poster “Epidemic evolution: The changing epidemiological parameters of the highly virulent Marburg Virus” at the Medical Student Research day. This work was mentored by Michael E. DeWitt, John W. Sanders, and Thomas F. Wierzba.
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Citation
@online{e._dewitt2024,
author = {E. DeWitt, Michael},
title = {Medical {Student} {Research} in 2024},
date = {2024-10-24},
url = {https://wakeforestid.com/posts/2024-10-17-msrp2024/},
doi = {10.59350/weysd-wwf85},
langid = {en}
}