We were one of 33 sites nationwide selected to host 2022 Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER) Medical Student Anesthesia Research Fellows. FAER created the Medical Student Anesthesia Research Fellowship (MSARF) program to encourage talented medical students to consider careers in anesthesiology research and perioperative medicine. The summer fellowship provides medical students with an eight-week research experience within an academic anesthesiology department. During the fellowship, students participate in research, training, and clinical activities. In addition, the students have the opportunity to present their scientific work at the at the FAER MSARF Symposium at the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) annual meeting.
Alice Chen grew up in Connecticut and graduated from Duke University in 2019. In college, she advocated for menstrual health equity and studied biology and gender studies, which sparked her passion for women's health. She is currently a second-year medical student at the Frank H. Netter School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University. This past summer, she worked in our obstetric anesthesiology division with mentor Dr. Grace Lim on a project investigating the association between peripartum pain perception and premenstrual syndrome. She recruited, enrolled, and conducted quantitative sensory testing on patients at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital. At the 2022 ASA meeting, she presented the poster “Correlations between Premenstrual Syndrome and Postpartum Pain.”
Bianca Elias is currently a second-year medical student at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine. She graduated summa cum laude from Oakland University in 2017. During her fellowship, she worked with mentors Drs. Brian Williams and Sara Piva (Pitt Dept. of Physical Therapy) on her project “Psychometrics of Tests of Functional Performance After Total Joint Replacement (TJR) in Veterans.” This research focused on evaluating the measurements of physical function regarding patients’ reported outcomes and performance-based tests. Bianca presented an abstract on this work at the 2022 ASA meeting.
