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I'm a first year MD candidate, looking for a mentor for a 4 year longitudinal research experience required by my school...
For the record, I don't know which field I wanna go into though I found microbio and neurology to be pretty cool so far, which is why I am down to my 2 mentor/project choices:
option #1: infectious diseases & transplant
- experienced mentor who's mentored a lot of med students in the past. established in the field. seemingly has connections with journals in his field and can pretty easily get papers out.
- by virtue of working with him, I can be involved in a summer transplant team program where I get exposed to surgery shadowing opp's, poster sessions, special seminars designed to educate M1 summer students, etc
- project will likely involve chart review, topic doesnt sound all that thrilling
- my mentor's idea is to publish a review article before the M1 summer (so I can get a better idea of the field and also get an article out), do a quick project over the summer and likely get something published, even if just an abstract. Seems to have a pretty solid idea of what works with my schedule and skill set
option #2: neuro-oncology
- a young MD mentor in neuro-oncology who is brand new on the scene + a collaborating translational research lab whose focus is on mathematical modeling of brain tumors (seems to be a big person in the field, and it sounds like our school is really trying to expand our neuro-onc dept)
- all summer I will likely review lots and lots of MRI's picking out white spots, but possibly also chart review. retrospective clinical studies with a translational twist
- the project sounds cooler and the study sounds much more high impact. I am also slightly more interested in neuro than infectious diseases but who knows?! but I'm a bit worried that both are new to my institution, just getting established (literally, they both started at our school in the past few months), and the MD is newer to mentoring med students. The PhD is already established in her field though, and does have a large database already.
- less guarantee of a publication, though more work is possibly expected by these mentors
- the MD is a female and i feel like i could get some good mentoring from her outside of a research project, though i suppose I could get that from any female MD i approach...
Overall, both people seemed super excited to take on a med student for 4 years and say publication is highly likely. Both mentors seemed very nice personality-wise. Any advice???
For the record, I don't know which field I wanna go into though I found microbio and neurology to be pretty cool so far, which is why I am down to my 2 mentor/project choices:
option #1: infectious diseases & transplant
- experienced mentor who's mentored a lot of med students in the past. established in the field. seemingly has connections with journals in his field and can pretty easily get papers out.
- by virtue of working with him, I can be involved in a summer transplant team program where I get exposed to surgery shadowing opp's, poster sessions, special seminars designed to educate M1 summer students, etc
- project will likely involve chart review, topic doesnt sound all that thrilling
- my mentor's idea is to publish a review article before the M1 summer (so I can get a better idea of the field and also get an article out), do a quick project over the summer and likely get something published, even if just an abstract. Seems to have a pretty solid idea of what works with my schedule and skill set
option #2: neuro-oncology
- a young MD mentor in neuro-oncology who is brand new on the scene + a collaborating translational research lab whose focus is on mathematical modeling of brain tumors (seems to be a big person in the field, and it sounds like our school is really trying to expand our neuro-onc dept)
- all summer I will likely review lots and lots of MRI's picking out white spots, but possibly also chart review. retrospective clinical studies with a translational twist
- the project sounds cooler and the study sounds much more high impact. I am also slightly more interested in neuro than infectious diseases but who knows?! but I'm a bit worried that both are new to my institution, just getting established (literally, they both started at our school in the past few months), and the MD is newer to mentoring med students. The PhD is already established in her field though, and does have a large database already.
- less guarantee of a publication, though more work is possibly expected by these mentors
- the MD is a female and i feel like i could get some good mentoring from her outside of a research project, though i suppose I could get that from any female MD i approach...
Overall, both people seemed super excited to take on a med student for 4 years and say publication is highly likely. Both mentors seemed very nice personality-wise. Any advice???
