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UC Summer Research Prepares Students for STEMM Careers

headshot of Cedric Ricks By Cedric Ricks 260-415-8554
8 minute read August 12, 2016

Vincent Huang's summer research was designed to determine whether a novel ultrasound therapy that could be potentially employed to treat heart attack patients is indeed safe. His student project was one of two to win first place awards during the 2016 SURF Capstone Poster Sessions held in CARE/Crawley Atrium August 4-5, 2016.

Reperfusion injury to the heart can occur after a blood clot is removed and heart muscle cells, deprived initially of oxygen and now adapted to low oxygen conditions, are perfused with large amounts of excess oxygen, says Huang, a first-year med student and recent alum of the University of Cincinnati's ROSE Program.

Huang, working under the guidance of Kevin Haworth, PhD, assistant professor in the Division of Cardiovascular Health and Disease, says his mentor and lab associates hope reperfusion injury can be minimized by using tiny droplets of liquid treated with ultrasound so they become gaseous microbubbles. The microbubbles could help control the amount of oxygen delivered to sections of the heart to counteract reperfusion injury.

"One safety concern of this ultrasound therapeutic is we might be breaking up red blood cells within the circulation," explains Huang, whose research with Haworth is through the ROSE program. "This process of changing the droplet into a gas with ultrasound can result in a violent process that sends damaging shockwaves into the surrounding tissue and is known as inertial cavitation."  

"We were wondering if the ultrasound therapy would hurt the heart and other organs by breaking up red blood cells and releasing those cells' internal components," says Huang. "My study's purpose was to validate that it does not cause detectable hemolysis of the red blood cells. This study validates the safety of ultrasound activated droplets in regards to hemolysis."

Huang's research poster was titled, "Acoustic Droplet Vaporization of Non-Size Isolated and Size-Isolated Droplets Do Not Cause Detectable Hemolysis."

He was among close to 200 college and high school students from the across the country who participated in the capstone poster sessions sponsored by several programs at the UC College of Medicine and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) as part of the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) initiative, designed to provide rich research internship experiences for college students and high school seniors.

Participating programs included: 

  • COM Office of Graduate Education SURF
  • CCHMC SURF
  • Neuro SURF
  • MSTP SURF
  • ASPET SURF
  • BRIMS Program
  • ROSE Program
  • McNair Scholars Program
  • UC Honors Program

"I thought the competition in the capstone poster sessions was pretty tough, and I was looking at some other posters and I was very impressed with their data," says Huang. "I was a little surprised I got first prize, but I am really honored. I did talk to others about their research, and it was all very well done."

Iain Cartwright, PhD, Associate Dean for Graduate Education at UC College of Medicine, says the summer research programs and accompanying capstone poster sessions are an excellent way to expose undergraduates and high school students from across the country to research faculty and biomedical programs at the university.

"We are very happy to get them in the doors of the College of Medicine," says Cartwright. "We always get very positive responses from the judges about their posters; these students are highly selective and genuinely terrific prospects. We hope to sell Cincinnati as a place where they can do meaningful research that can impact people's lives in the future." 

"While we can't expect all these students to apply to the University of Cincinnati for graduate or medical school, some percentage of them do, and a percentage of those will actually come here. We track many of these students as they leave here and keep in touch to find out what their future holds," he continues. "This program is part of their onward and upward pathway, and having this sort of experience on their resume clearly marks these students as serious contenders when it comes to admissions committees looking at their credentials. Students hoping to go to graduate school and to some extent medical school who haven't spent much time in a lab are at a serious disadvantage. This is a very important experience for them."

Huang took top honors for research among students in the ROSE program, UC Honors program and McNair Scholars program. These students had research projects that continued for more than one summer. Prizes were also offered for those students whose research spanned just the 10 week SURF summer program itself.

All student winners were recognized during an awards ceremony. Marc Rothenberg, MD, PhD, Director of both the Division of Allergy and Immunology and the Cincinnati Center for Eosinophilic Disorders at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, gave the ceremony's keynote speech. At its conclusion, he eulogized Olivia Erhardt, a 2015 SURF participant and Columbia University student who performed summer research in his laboratory at Cincinnati Children's. Erhardt tragically lost her life in a bus accident during a medical mission trip to Honduras in January 2016.

In her memory, and in the presence of her parents, a first place SURF capstone award and plaque, dedicated to Erhardt, was presented to the other first place SURF Capstone winner, Daniel Moskop, a rising senior attending Vassar College who worked this summer in the laboratory of Joshua Waxman, PhD, assistant professor in the UC Department of Pediatrics.  The title of Moskop's poster was "Nr2f1a is required for proper atrioventricular canal formation". 

Other notable winners in the capstone poster sessions (there are three second-place winners) include:

  • Melissa MacDonald, a sophomore at UC and part of the CCHMC SURF program, won second place for her research titled, "BMP and Wnt regulation of endoderm progenitors." Her mentor is Aaron Zorn, PhD, associate director of the Digestive Health Center at Cincinnati Children's and professor in the UC Department of Pediatrics.
  • Ariana Davis, a junior at UC and part of McNair Scholars program, won second place for her research titled, "Examining Physical and Mental Health Behaviors in Urban Community Environments." Her mentor is Monica Mitchell, pediatric psychologist at Cincinnati Children's and professor in the UC Department of Pediatrics.
  • Logan Borgelt, a first year medical student at UCCOM and part of the ROSE program, won second place for his research titled, "Neurophysiological Effects of Multiple Mood Episodes in Bipolar Disorder."
  • Simone Brown, a student at Oakwood University and part of SURF-GE program, won third place for her research titled, "A glucocorticoid receptor modulator C118335 prevents obesity related endpoints in female rodent model of menopause." Her mentor is Matia Solomon, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience.
  • Andrea Toth, a student at the University of Dayton and the ROSE program, won third place for the research titled, "A Dried Blood Spot Card-Based Test for Diagnosis of Autoimmune Pulmonary Alveolar Proteinosis." Toth's mentor was Bruce Trapnell, MD, assistant director, adult cystic fibrosis center at Cincinnati Children's and professor in the UC Department of Pediatrics.

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