Donald W. Seldin Research Symposium 

This May, residents, fellows, faculty, and staff will join together to celebrate research conducted by UT Southwestern Internal Medicine Trainees and their mentors at the Donald W. Seldin Research Symposium. Six finalists will present their work at Grand Rounds, and attendees will vote to select the winning Seldin Scholar. Monetary awards are issued to each finalist and their faculty mentor to further support the education and development of each trainee, as well as further develop the combined research project between each finalist and their mentor.

Dr. Joseph Vento, a UTSW alumnus and current resident, prepared research for the 2018 event. He shared his thoughts on the importance of the Symposium below:

I chose to participate in the Donald W. Seldin Research Symposium because it is an opportunity to showcase the work residents are doing outside of clinical duties to advance the field of medicine. For me, being a physician in an academic center is about balancing the personal interactions of clinical medicine with working on big-picture issues to make health care better and more accessible to patients.

For the Symposium, I worked with mentors, Drs. Isaac Bowman and James Brugarolas, to prepare a poster on a clinical case of a renal cancer patient treated effectively with immunotherapy. The patient's tumor tissue was used in mouse tumor graft models and subsequently imaged with a novel technology called ImmunoPET (iPET). The case showcases how iPET could become a clinical decision-making tool in deciding which renal cancer patients may respond to certain types of treatment.

Preparing the patient case challenged me to dive deeper into topics that I may never learn in a clinical setting during residency. Understanding more of the basic science, pathophysiology, and pharmacology of cancer has allowed me to think more critically about patients I encounter in clinical settings. It has also given me hope that as treatments continue to improve, we will have more to offer patients who previously had no treatment options.

It is fulfilling to be in an environment that fosters daily learning and frequent brainstorming of ways to improve our field. The Symposium is a great way to see some of the ways this culture manifests. Having an internal conference is a neat opportunity for peer-to-peer education as well as professional networking
within our institution.

While I'm only in my second year of residency, it's exciting to see our leadership encouraging the pursuit of projects beyond clinical medicine. With the rate of advancements in scientific discoveries and medical technology, the medicine of today is not going to be the medicine of ten years from now, and it is essential we develop a broad skill set that will enable us to be effective physicians in such a dynamic environment.

The Donald W. Seldin Research Symposium is made possible by generous donations that enable UTSW to award trainees judged to have given the most outstanding and impactful research presentation. These awards are made in direct support of their medical education and career development.

Click here to support the Seldin Scholars Program, today.