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Welcome to the 38th Annual MD-PhD National Student Conference!

Copper Mountain Resort, July 7th-9th, 2023

 


 

CONTACT US

Have a Question? Email the MD-PhD Planning Committee here:

mdphdnationalconference@cuanschutz.edu

Chris Sienza, MSTP Administrator

Shanawaj (Roy) Khair, Communication Liaison

13001 E. 17th Place

Fitzsimons Building, Room W5119

Mail Stop C296

Aurora, CO 80045

Phone: (303) 724-4600

Registration

Register Here

Click the link above to register. All attendees must register through this link (regardless of whether or not an administrator paid for their registration through the multiple registrants' link below).

Early Registration ends April 28th:

$425

 

Regular Registration ends June 8th:

$450

Multiple Registrants Page Here

If you are an administrator looking to pay for multiple attendees, click the link above. Please email the confirmation email after completion to mdphdnationalconference@cuanschutz.edu. We will then email you a promotion code that the attendees that you paid for can use to waive the registration fee at checkout. Filling this out does NOT register the attendees; it only pays for them to register themselves.

 

Deadlines

Early Registration Deadline:

April 28, 2023

 

Abstract Submission Deadline for Oral Presentations and/or Diversity Travel Awards:

May 19, 2023

Abstract Submission Deadline for Poster-Only:

May 31, 2023

Registration Deadline:

June 9, 2023

 

Cancellation with Refund:

June 16th, 2023

 

*Dates may be subject to change

MD-PhD Attendee Survey

Submit Attendee Survey Here

Please fill out this form only after you have registered. This is the same form provided in your confirmation email. Please only fill this out once if you can. Please email us if you resubmit (e.g., you submitted without an abstract, but later wanted to submit an abstract).

This survey is required for the conference for NIH reporting purposes. It is also the method used to submit an abstract to be considered for an oral or poster presentation and to be considered for a diversity travel award.

COVID Vaccination Requirements

Submit Vaccination Status Here

Proof of vaccination is required for attendance. If you have not completed the form linked above, attendees must present proof of vaccination at the registration to attend conference events.

It is recommended that you self-test prior to attendance, and we ask that you do not attend the conference if you have any symptoms at the time of travel. Contact the conference planning committee for this event for assistance with your registration.

Masks are not required but are strongly encouraged indoors. Supplies of masks will be available throughout the conference.

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Conference Program and Handbook

pdf
37th Annual MD-PhD Conference Program 2022 (pdf)
1437 KB

Poster Session Presentations

Coming in June!

Here is a link to pdfs of the two planned poster sessions (see agenda for times).

POSTER PRESENTATION SESSION I

POSTER PRESENTATION SESSION II

Diversity Travel Awards

Congratulations to the Following People Selected for Diversity Travel Awards!

Coming in June!

PHYSICIAN SCIENTIST TRAINING PROGRAM

Coming soon!

HOW TO SOCIO

We will be using Socio as our conference event platform. All the video streaming, networking, engagement, and much more offered throughout the conference will be powered by Socio.

We will be sending out instructions for gaining access to both the Socio web browser and the phone app at a later time to the emails you provide during registration. Please download the "Socio Event App" to your phone (Google Play or Apple Store) and create an account through your school email before checking in at the registration table! You can then search for the event "38th Annual MD-PhD National Student Conference" in the app, and we will provide you with the code to enter either at the registration table, or in an email.

Check out our “Socio Web App Tutorial” and our “Socio Phone App Tutorial” for instructions on how to navigate Socio (concurrently on your computer AND your phone!) and all that our conference offers! Due to Socio's cookies and caches, we recommend using the Socio web browser in incognito mode to get the latest updates with each refresh. We highly recommend using the Socio Phone App over the Web App for visual purposes.

Further information can be found below in the FAQ section. There will be a 38th Annual MDPhD National Student Conference Program document provided soon for more information.

Thank You To Our Sponsors:

RadiationOncology

Department of Pediatric Surgery at (CU).

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

The annual National MD-PhD Student Conference is a unique assembly, held at the Copper Mountain Resort, that unites MSTP students, alumni, and faculty from across the country to explore the intersections of research and medicine, focusing on diverse careers, healthcare policy, and scientific breakthroughs. The conference offers prestigious keynote speakers, student oral and poster sessions, a diverse career panel, and breakout sessions that encompass various topics of interest to MD-PhD students. Every year, this is a great event to meet colleagues and mentors, learn about opportunities available to MD-PhDs, and discuss exciting science.

FAQ

Please see the REGISTRATION highlight box on the left-hand side of this website for links, information, and cost. The DEADLINES highlight box also gives information on important dates.

Administrators can pay for attendees through the multiple registrants' page. They must email their confirmation email to the conference committee to receive a promotion code. The attendees then must complete the registration form individually to register and can use the provided promotion code at checkout to waive the registration fee.

Following registration, attendees must still fill out the MD-PhD Attendee survey (required) for NIH reporting. This form is also how attendees will submit an abstract to be considered for an oral/poster presentation, and/or a diversity travel award.

Attendees must also provide proof of COVID vaccination, ideally through the provided vaccination form. 

This information, the forms, and more information can all be found on the left-hand side of this website, or in the registration confirmation email.


Following successful registration, please make sure to do the following action items (also provided in your confirmation email):

  1. Complete the MD-PhD Attendee Survey
  2. Complete the vaccination form
  3. Book flights and travel for the weekend
  4. Download the "Socio Event App" Mobile app (google play or apple store), create an account with your school email, and make sure you can find the "38th Annual MD-PhD National Conference" event. This should require an event code which will be given either by email or at the registration table. Be on the lookout for an email the week of about how to navigate the conference through Socio!
  5. Enjoy the conference!

The code will be updated by June so you can book rooms.

The conference will be held at the Copper Mountain Resort. We strongly encourage making lodging accommodations at the Copper Mountain Resort. Booking at the Copper Mountain Resort helps support the conference. We have blocked off a certain number of rooms for the resort with reduced pricing.

When you are ready to book room(s) for yourself and/or others, contact the Copper Mountain Resort (1 (888) 760-7561) and tell them you are looking to book rooms specifically for the MD-PhD Conference and give them the code ####. We suggest you register beforehand so you can use your email confirmation as proof if needed.

While the conference is primarily held in the Center Village, either the Center Village or East Village for lodging should work fine, assuming they are both available for our reserved rooms.

Pricing and availability are subject to change. Last we checked, options ranged from a room with a queen bed (starting around $378+) to a 3-bedroom condo for up to 6 people (starting around $984+). If you hear about different availability and/or costs, please feel free to email us, so we can update our information.

If you have any issues booking a room or questions in general, please email the committee at the email provided on the left-hand side of the website (Contact Us highlight box).

There are several options to get to Copper Mountain Resort (especially from Denver International Airport). We suggest a good place to start looking for whichever option you prefer is here: https://www.coppercolorado.com/plan-your-trip/getting-here/how-to-get-here 

A bigger version of the general resort map below can be found herecopper_mountain_village_map

ConferenceCenterMap1

ConferenceCenterMap2

Our event will be up by July.

We will navigate the conference using the "Socio Event App" Mobile version. To prepare, please do the following before registration:

(1) Download the "Socio Event App" from Google Play or Apple Store.

(2) Create an account with your school email

(3) Confirm that you can find our event through "search events." Try searching for "38th Annual MD-PhD National Student Conference." You should hopefully not need to type that whole thing in the event search to find it.

(4) The event should ask for an event code to officially join the conference. The event code will be provided at the registration table when you register (and in an email just before the conference)! Please show up to registration with the Socio Event App already downloaded, and a login created so that all you might need is the event code!

(5) Use the given event code at registration to enter the conference!

We recommend using the Mobile app over the Web App for visual purposes. But a web app version does also exist.

  • Learning from the best with 3 Keynote Speakers with live Q&A sessions
  • Addressing diversity and discrimination in school and in your career with a diversity speaker and diversity subgroup discussions
  • Preparing for your next potential steps, with a PSTP Residency panel and Showcase to meet directly with PSTP directors in small groups
  • Tackling integrity in science with an ethics discussion
  • Chances to present your work and connect with the research of MD-PhD students across the country with Poster Sessions and Oral Presentations
  • Sunday Funday Activities, Food, and Breaks throughout allow for ample time to connect with others and take in the fresh mountain air
  • Conference Swag, including engraved water bottles
  • And so much more!

The annual national MD-PhD conference is dedicated to making the event available for all MD-PhD students throughout the country. We believe having a more diverse population at the conference will benefit every student in training. To achieve that end, students from an under-represented minority or from a disadvantaged background (according to NIH standards) may qualify for a diversity travel award (DTA). Ten awards will be granted. 

Attendees can apply for a DTA through the required MD-PhD Attendee Survey emailed to them with their registration confirmation. On the MD-PhD Attendee Survey, attendees must submit an abstract before the oral presentation abstract deadline, select yes to be considered for a DTA, and may optionally submit a short document on why they qualify for a diversity award and/or how this award would help them. DTAs will be selected largely based on their abstract, but the optional additional document will be taken into account if it is also submitted. 

Decisions on DTAs will be emailed to attendees in early June and will be posted on the website (unless they request otherwise). Attendees who are granted a DTA will receive a 100% refund on their registration cost if selected. 

For more information, please refer to this document: Diversity Travel Awards

Abstracts (2000 total character limit) can be submitted through the required MD-PhD Attendee Survey provided with your registration email confirmation. You must submit an abstract to be considered for an oral presentation, poster, or Diversity Travel Award. You can select your abstract to be considered for both an oral presentation and a poster.

Abstracts are due by May 19th to be considered for an oral presentation and/or a Diversity Travel Award. Abstracts are due by May 31st to be considered for a poster presentation.

Posters and oral presentation selection will be based on the abstract submission from the MD-PhD Attendee Survey provided in your registration email confirmation.

An email telling you if you won a DTA or are giving an oral presentation or presenting a poster should have been sent out to you before mid-June. We will send the email to the email address you listed on registration.

Diversity Travel Awards and oral and poster presentations will be displayed elsewhere on this website following selection.

Given the high rates of travel and community transmission, we want to assure registrants that we have a vaccine requirement and that we strongly recommend wearing masks at indoor events of the conference, especially if you have been traveling recently. Supplies of masks will be available throughout the conference.

Proof of COVID vaccination is required for attendance. Please fill out the form provided in your registration confirmation email. It is recommended that you self-test prior to attendance, and we ask that you do not attend the conference if you have any symptoms during travel.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

  • Dr. Manu Platt, PhD
  • Dr. Kerry J. Ressler, MD-PhD
  • Dr. Vera Gorbunova, PhD

manuDr. Manu Platt is the inaugural director of the NIH-wide Center for Biomedical Engineering Technology Acceleration (BETA Center), housed within the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) Intramural Research Program. In addition, Dr. Platt is NIBIB associate director for Scientific Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Previously, Dr. Platt was professor and Associate Chair of Graduate Studies in the Walter H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. He also was Georgia Research Alliance Distinguished Cancer Scientist and Deputy Director, Interdisciplinary Bioengineering Graduate Program at Georgia Tech Walter H. Coulter Distinguished Faculty Fellow.

Dr. Platt’s science interest was cultivated as a middle and high school student during his participation in FAME (Forum to Advance Minorities in Engineering), a science and engineering enrichment program at Delaware State University in Dover, DE. Dr. Platt earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology from Morehouse College and was distinguished as an ARCS Foundation Scholar and a NASA Scholar. During his senior year at Morehouse, he began tissue engineering research with Dr. Robert M. Nerem in his lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology where he would ultimately join for his graduate studies where he earned his PhD under the direction of Dr. Hanjoong Jo studying mechanosensitive regulation of endothelial cell biology and its role in cardiovascular disease. Dr. Platt was in the second class of the newly established joint Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. Program  between Georgia Tech and Emory University School of Medicine which has now been the #2 program in the country for more than a decade and has an excellent MD/PhD program.

After postdoctoral research at MIT with Drs. Linda Griffith and Douglas Lauffenburger, in 2009, Dr. Platt began a tenure track faculty position in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory. He has developed a diverse, robust research program with focuses on proteolytic mechanisms of disease, translational approaches to reduce strokes in people affected by sickle cell disease and harnessing proteolytic networks and systems biology tools to predict disease progression in patients with breast cancer which has led to work investigating mechanisms underlying aggressive breast cancers in young women in Ethiopia.

Dr. Platt is an outspoken leader for his community and an avid supporter of his undergraduate and graduate students from a number of diverse backgrounds and experiences. He has participated in conversations with the Gladstone Institute on issues surrounding Diversity and Inclusion, and Anti-Racism. He participated in Discussions on Science and Diversity through Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science. Dr. Platt has graduated ten Ph.D. students under his advisement with four of whom have gone on to begin tenure track professors at top universities, three of them being Black women, and another to a tenure track teaching position. Other graduates have entered industry positions, medical writing, public-partner biotech relationships, and more. He is proud of all of them! We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Manu Platt to the 38th Annual National MD-PhD Student Conference.

KerryResslerKerry J. Ressler, MD, PhD, is chief scientific officer and James and Patricia Poitras Chair in Psychiatry at McLean Hospital, and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is current president of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) and a past president of the Society for Biological Psychiatry. Dr. Ressler is a former Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Ressler’s lab focuses on translational research bridging molecular neurobiology in animal models with human genetic research on emotion, particularly fear and anxiety disorders. He has published over 500 manuscripts ranging from basic molecular mechanisms of fear processing to understanding how emotion is encoded in a region of the brain called the amygdala, in both animal models and human patients.

The Ressler lab uses well-established mouse models to examine different aspects of fear learning (e.g., acquisition, consolidation and extinction).  To do this, they utilize a variety of molecular-genetic neurocircuitry tools such as optogenetics, DREADDs, cell-type specific calcium imaging and transcriptional profiling and DNA methylation analyses combined with viral-vector and transgenic manipulations. These models allow the lab to investigate the role of different brain regions, in particular the amygdala, as well as neural cell populations, and the underlying gene regulation in these cells in fear processing. Furthermore, his work examines how these mechanisms may be involved in the development of fear-based disorders in humans, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression and other stress-related syndromes. Additionally, Dr. Ressler’s lab utilizes data collected from human clinical populations to identify genetic traits and neural processes that may contribute to the development of these illnesses and provide novel targets for research using animal models. By gaining a more mechanistic understanding of how fear works in the mammalian brain, Dr. Ressler’s discoveries contribute to the development of novel treatments, and possibly even the prevention, of fear based psychiatric illnesses.

veraDr. Vera Gorbunova is the Endowed Doris Johns Cherry Professor at the University of Rochester and serves as co-Director for the Rochester Aging Research Center. Dr. Gorbunova has made important contributions to our understanding of the biology of Aging, DNA Repair, and Cancer. Aging is one of the biggest mysteries of biology. “Why do we age?” is a basic biological question as aging involves accumulation of DNA mutations and double-strand breaks. Dr. Gorbunova and her lab have performed intriguing studies comparing aging characteristics in short- and long-lived animal species including mice, porcupines, naked mole rats, and even whales. Dr. Gorbunova earned her B.S. degrees at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia, and her Ph.D. at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. More recently the focus of her research has been on the longest-lived rodent species the naked mole rats and the blind mole rat. Dr. Gorbunova identified high molecular weight hyaluronan as the key mediator of cancer-resistance in the naked mole rat. Her work received awards from the Ellison Medical Foundation, the Glenn Foundation, American Federation for Aging Research, and from the National Institutes of Health. Her work was awarded the Cozzarelli Prize from PNAS, the prize for research on aging from ADPS/Alianz, France, Prince Hitachi Prize in Comparative Oncology, Japan, and Davey prize from Wilmot Cancer Center.  

Dr. Gorbunova is committed to the success of her trainees and has mentored many graduate and undergraduate students who have gone on to secure successful academic positions. We are very excited to welcome Dr. Vera Gorbunova to the 38th Annual National MD-PhD Student Conference.

Conference Schedule

  • Friday, July 7th
  • Saturday, July 8th
  • Sunday, July 9th

9:00 - 12:00 PM Registration, Coffee, Poster Set-Up

Kokopelli's Trail

 

12:00 - 1:30 PM Lunch

Bighorn Room A

 

12:30 - 1:30 PM Keynote Address #1

Bighorn Room A

 

1:30 - 2:00 PM Coffee Break

Kokopelli's Trail

 

2:00 - 3:00 PM Oral Presentations #1

Ptarmigan All Rooms

 

3:30 - 4:30 PM Breakout Sessions

Ptarmigan All Rooms

A. Ethics Discussion

B. Research Residency Discussion

 

5:00 - 6:30 PM Dinner

Bighorn Room A

 

5:30 - 6:30 PM Keynote Address #2

Bighorn Room A

 

7:00 - 8:30 PM Poster Session #1 Cash Bar

Kokopelli Trail & Jack's Banquet

 

 

 

7:30 - 9:30 AM Breakfast, Poster Set-Up

Bighorn Room A

 

9:00 - 10:00 AM Oral Presentations #2

Ptarmigan ALL ROOMS

 

10:30 - 11:30 AM Diversity Speaker

Bighorn Room A

 

11:45 - 1:00 PM Lunch

Bighorn Room A

 

12:15 - 1:15 PM Diversity Subgroup 

Bighorn Room A

 

1:30 - 2:30 PM Oral Presentations #3

Ptarmigan ALL ROOMS


3:00 - 4:00 PM PSTP Showcase 

Bighorn Room A

 

4:00 - 5:30 PM Poster Session #2

Kokopelli & Jack's Banquet

 

6:00 - 7:00 PM Keynote Address #3

Bighorn Room A

 

7:30 - 8:30 PM Dinner

Copper Station East Village

 

8:30 - 9:30 PM Awards & Closing Remarks

Copper Station East Village


8:00 - 10:00 AM Breakfast Buffet

Bighorn Room A

 

8:00 AM - 1:00 PM Sunday Funday Activities

Refer to sign-up sheets

 

The rest of the day is to allow you to do other fun activities, relax, or travel back for flights home!


 

 

 

 

 

Oral Presentations

Congratulations to the Following People Selected for Oral Presentations!

Coming in June!
  • Bioengineering & Cancer Biology
  • Neuroscience & Molecular Biology
  • General Medicine I & II
  • Immunology & Microbiology
Coming in June!
Coming in June!
Coming in June!

Coming in June!

BREAKOUT SESSIONS

  • Diversity Equity & Inclusion
  • Research Ethics

Coming Soon!

Stay Tuned!
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